一、主題： Government Procurement, Market Power, and Consumer Welfare: Empirical Evidence from the Infant Formula Market

二、主講人：安永紅，德州農工大學經濟系助理教授（with tenure）。他在約翰霍普金斯大學獲得經濟學博士學位，研究領域包括微觀計量和産業組織，曾在Journal of Econometrics、Journal of Business & Economic Statistics、Journal of Applied Econometrics、Applied Economics等期刊發表多篇學術論文。

三、時間：2018年6月5日（周二）,16:00-17:30

四、地點：學院南路校區主教學樓913會議室

五、主持人：王雅琦，bevictor伟德官网講師

六、資助：bevictor伟德官网引智計劃資助

Abstract: The US infant formula market is highly concentrated and over one-half of the total sales are sold through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). The three major manufacturers compete not only for non-WIC consumers but also to serve WIC participants exclusively by bidding a rebate on their wholesale prices. Using data of sales and manufacturers' rebates, we investigate how the WIC program (1) affects manufacturers' pricing strategies and leads to the substantial gap between the wholesale prices and the after-rebate prices, and (2) distorts the prices paid by the non-WIC consumers. Our estimates show that manufacturers' marginal costs are much higher than the prices paid by WIC program. Nevertheless, winning a WIC contract is profitable because serving WIC participants has a substantial spillover effect (increasing 30.6% of the demand from nonparticipants), and the manufacturer's loss from WIC participants are subsidized by the increased prices for nonparticipants. We further conduct counterfactual analyses to investigate the impacts of the WIC program on non-WIC consumers.