Joel Waldfogel

Joel Waldfogel

Professor, Frederick R Kappel Chair in Applied Economics

Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship

Education

PhD 1990
Economics Stanford University

A.B. 1984
Economics Brandeis University

Expertise

Joel Waldfogel was previously the Ehrenkranz Family Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania''s Wharton School, where he and had served as department chair and associate vice dean. Prior to Wharton, Waldfogel was an associate professor of economics at Yale University.

His main research interests are industrial organization and law and economics, and he has conducted empirical studies of price advertising, media markets, the operation of differentiated product markets, and issues related to digital products, including piracy, pricing, and revenue sharing. He has published more than 50 articles in scholarly outlets, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the RAND Journal of Economics. He also has published several books, including The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can''t Always Get What You Want (Harvard University Press, 2007) and Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn''t Buy Presents for the Holidays (Princeton University Press, 2009). He has also written for Slate.

Waldfogel received a BA in economics from Brandeis University and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. He grew up in South Minneapolis, graduating from Washburn High School.

Selected Works

"Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefit of New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music.” (with Luis Aguiar) Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming

"Public Monopoly and Social Efficiency: Evidence from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's Entry Decisions."(with Katja Seim), American Economic Review 2013

"Pop Internationalism: Has A Half Century of World Music Trade Displaced Local Culture?" (with Fernando Ferreira), Economic Journal 2013

"Copyright Protection, Technological Change, and the Quality of New Products: Evidence from Recorded Music since Napster," Journal of Law & Economics, November 2012

"Music for a Song: An Empirical Look at Uniform Song Prices and its Alternatives." (with Ben Shiller), Journal of Industrial Economics, December 2011

"Product Quality and Market Size (with Steve Berry), Journal of Industrial Economics, 2010

"The New York Times and the Market for Local Newspapers." (with Lisa George), American Economic Review, 2006

Current Activities

Scholarly Service

Member, National Research Council Committee on Research on Copyright in the Digital Age