Robin S.

Lee

Professor of Economics
Department of Economics, Harvard University

Robin S. Lee is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. His research lies within the field of industrial organization, and examines how firms bargain, contract and form supply relationships in imperfectly competitive markets. Much of his work develops and applies formal analytical frameworks that aim to capture key institutional details of real-world settings, while maintaining sufficient flexibility and tractability for use by researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. He has examined several policy-relevant issues across a variety of industries, including: vertical integration, mergers, and exclusive deals in media and in multi-sided/platform-based technology markets; insurer-provider consolidation, narrow networks, and selective contracting in health care markets; and market design innovation in financial markets.

Professor Lee received his A.B. and A.M. in Economics and his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard, and previously served on the faculty at New York University Stern School of Business. He is currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and his research is supported by the National Science Foundation.

Research fields: industrial organization, applied microeconomic theory, health economics.

» Curriculum Vitae (October 2019)

» Research Summary (July 2018)

RefereedPublications

11. The Price Effects of Cross-Market Mergers: Theory and Evidence from the Hospital Industry
(with Leemore Dafny and Kate Ho), Summer 2019, RAND Journal of Economics, 50(2): 286-325.
» Coverage: APM Marketplace

10. Equilibrium Insurer-Provider Networks: Bargaining and Exclusion in Health Care Markets (with Kate Ho), February 2019, American Economic Review, 109(2): 473-522.
» Online Appendix
» Non-Technical Summary: Microeconomic Insights

9. "Nash-in-Nash" Bargaining: A Microfoundation for Applied Work
(with Allan Collard-Wexler and Gautam Gowrisankaran), February 2019, Journal of Political Economy, 127(1): 163-195.
» Online Appendix

8. The Welfare Effects of Vertical Integration in Multichannel Television Markets
(with Gregory Crawford, Michael Whinston and Ali Yurukoglu), May 2018, Econometrica, 86(3): 891-954.
» Supplemental Material
» Non-Technical Summaries: Microeconomic Insights, Competition Policy International
» 2019 Best Paper Award, Association of Competition Economics

7. Interviewing in Two-Sided Matching Markets
(with Michael Schwarz), Fall 2017, Rand Journal of Economics, 48(3): 835-855.

6. Hospital and Physician Prices and Treatment Choice in Labor and Delivery
(with Kyna Fong and Patricia Foo), Summer 2017, American Journal of Health Economics, 3(3): 422-453.

5. Insurer Competition in Health Care Markets
(with Kate Ho), March 2017, Econometrica, 85(2): 379-417.
» Supplemental Material
» Non-Technical Summaries: Microeconomic Insights, LSE Business Review, Vox EU

4. Competing Platforms
Fall 2014, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 23(3): 507-526.

3. Vertical Integration and Exclusivity in Platform and Two-Sided Markets
December 2013, American Economic Review, 103(7): 2960-3000.
» Online Appendix

2. Exclusivity and Control
(with Andrei Hagiu), Fall 2011, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 20(3): 679-708.
» Online Appendix

1. Multiple Equilibria and Selection by Learning in an Applied Setting
(with Ariel Pakes), July 2009, Economic Letters, 104(1): 13-16.

OtherPublications

6. Narrow Medical Provider Networks: Welfare Implications and Approaches to Market Design
(with Kate Ho), in preparation for More Equal by Design: Economic Design Responses to Inequality, eds. Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Teytelboym, Oxford University Press.

5. Empirical Models of Bilateral Contracting
May 2015, Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, eds. Robert A. Scott and Stephen M. Kosslyn, Wiley.

4. Home Videogame Platforms
August 2012, The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy, eds. Martin Peitz and Joel Waldfogel.

3. Price Discrimination in Service Industries
(with Anja Lambrecht, Katja Seim, Naufel J. Vilcassim, Amar Cheema, Yuxin Chen, Gregory Crawford, Kartik Hosanagar, Raghuram Iyengar, Oded Koenigsberg, Eugenio Miravete, Ozge Sahin), June 2012, Marketing Letters, 23(2): 423-438.

2. Subsidizing Creativity through Network Design: Zero Pricing and Net Neutrality
(with Tim Wu), Summer 2009, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23(3): 61-76.

1. Signaling Preferences in Interviewing Markets
(with Michael Schwarz), September 2007, in Computational Social Systems and the Internet, ed. by P. Cramton, R. Müller, E. Tardos, and M. Tennenholtz, no. 07271 in Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings, Dagstuhl, Germany.