Ariel Pakes

Ariel Pakes is one of the leading authorities in the fields of industrial organization, technological change, and econometric modeling. He has served as an economic consultant and provided expert testimony in court and through depositions. In a large joint defense antitrust case, Professor Pakes testified before the judge on the reliability and appropriateness of a structural model that an opposing expert developed. In addition, he has done work for a number of consultancies, government agencies, and large corporations.

A globally recognized leader in industrial organization, Professor Pakes has spoken on competition issues before numerous international agencies, including the European Competition Commission; at conferences on several continents; and in the United States, at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Professor Pakes has conducted research on pricing, profits, consumer welfare, and productivity in numerous industries, including healthcare, automotive, personal computers, and telecommunications equipment. He has developed methods for analyzing market responses to changes in policy and in business conditions, such as mergers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has incorporated his suggestion to improve the accuracy of its Consumer Price Index.

Professor Pakes received Northwestern University’s 2022 Nemmers Prize in Economics for his “fundamental contributions to the development of the field of empirical industrial organization as it is applied to the study of market power, prices, mergers and productivity.” In 2017, he was honored with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for “founding and shaping the field of empirical industrial organisation.” He received the Frisch Medal of the Econometric Society and was elected as a fellow of that society. Lexology Index (formerly Who’s Who Legal) has recommended Professor Pakes as a Thought Leader, as well as a leading competition economist and consulting expert in the competition field.

Professor Pakes is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a distinguished fellow of the Industrial Organization Society. He has served on a number of National Science Foundation panels, including the Presidential Fellow Advisory Board, the Economics Advisory Panel, and Data Opportunities. In addition, he has co-chaired the American Economic Association’s Census Advisory Panel and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Pakes edited the RAND Journal of Economics and has been a member of the editorial boards of several other scholarly journals, such as Econometrica, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, International Journal of Industrial Organization, and the Journal of Econometrics. He has authored or coauthored numerous articles and book chapters.