About

Jeffrey M. Perloff is a distinguished professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. His economic research covers industrial organization, marketing, labor, trade, and econometrics. He has authored several textbooks including Modern Industrial Organization (with Dennis Carlton), Microeconomics, Microeconomics: Theory and Applications with Calculus, Estimating Market Power and Strategies (with Larry Karp and Amos Golan), and Managerial Economics and Strategy (with James Brander). He has served as an editor for the journals Industrial Relations and the Journal of Industrial Organization Education, and as an associate editor for the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and the Journal of Productivity Analysis. His consulting work includes advising nonprofit organizations and government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and Agriculture on various topics ranging from trade disputes to social program evaluations. He has also conducted research in psychology. Jeffrey Perloff holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to his current position, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Applied psychology
• Social psychology
• World Wide Web
• Psychology
• Economics
• Market economy
• Monetary economics
• Business
• Microeconomics
• Telecommunications
• Commerce
• Internet privacy

Selected publications

• An Information-Theoretic Method for Identifying Effective Treatments and Policies at the Beginning of a Pandemic

  Entropy · 2024-11-26 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Identifying effective treatments and policies early in a pandemic is challenging because only limited and noisy data are available and biological processes are unknown or uncertain. Consequently, classical statistical procedures may not work or require strong structural assumptions. We present an information-theoretic approach that can overcome these problems and identify effective treatments and policies. The efficacy of this approach is illustrated using a study conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied this approach with and without prior information to the limited international data available in the second month (24 April 2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic. To check if our results were plausible, we conducted a second statistical analysis using an international sample with millions of observations available at the end of the pandemic's pre-vaccination period (mid-December 2020). Even with limited data, the information-theoretic estimates from the original study performed well in identifying influential factors and helped explain why death rates varied across nations. Later experiments and statistical analyses based on more recent, richer data confirm that these factors contribute to survival. Overall, the proposed information-theoretic statistical technique is a robust method that can overcome the challenges of under-identified estimation problems in the early stages of medical emergencies. It can easily incorporate prior information from theory, logic, or previously observed emergencies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Do Everyday-Low-Price Supermarkets Adjust their Prices?

  Research Square · 2023-01-24

  preprintOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract Was the rapid increase and collapse of commodity prices in 2007–2009 passed through to supermarket prices symmetrically? This study is the first to address this issue for an everyday-low-price (EDLP) supermarket chain, which infrequently changes its prices and rarely has sales. We also reexamine the question for typical firms that set a usual high price and have frequent sales. We examine 25 goods that use a primary commodity (such as rice in a bag of rice). We fail to reject symmetric adjustments for very few goods for both types of stores. In addition, we find that the probability an EDLP chain adjusts its prices in response to even a large commodity price shock is low for most goods. JEL: D40, Q13, C22

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How do Everyday-Low-Price Supermarkets Adjust Their Prices?

  Review of Industrial Organization · 2023 · 2 citations

  • Economics
  • Microeconomics
  • Commerce
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Natural resource management and policy · 2023-01-01

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Peter Berck was born on April 26, 1950, and died on August 10, 2018. He thoroughly enjoyed his life, work, family, and friends. He was married twice and had three children and four grandchildren. He was a passionate outdoorsman and an enthusiastic world traveler.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Estimating a mixed strategy : United and American Airlines

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We develop a generalized maximum entropy estimator that can estimate pure and mixed strategies subject to restrictions from game theory. This method avoids distributional assumptions and is consistent and efficient. We demonstrate this method by estimating the mixed strategies of duopolistic airlines.

  PublisherDOI

• How Large Are Double Markups?

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2022-09-30

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This replication package contains the data and code necessary to generate the results reported in "How Large Are Double Markups?" by Elisa Duran-Micco and Jeffrey M. Perloff to be published in the International Journal of Industrial Organization.

  PublisherDOI

• How large are double markups?

  International Journal of Industrial Organization · 2022-10-21

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Because prices exceed marginal costs in many upstream and downstream industries, downstream prices often reflect a double markup. This paper estimates the size of double markups across many industries accounting for direct and indirect upstream markups. The double markups in many U.S. manufacturing industries are significant because of large upstream and downstream markups and increasing returns to scale.

  PublisherDOI

• The effects of the Affordable Care Act on seasonal agricultural workers

  Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association · 2022-11-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This study investigates the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) policies (Medicaid expansion, health insurance premium subsidy, and tax penalty) on farmworkers' health insurance coverage and healthcare utilization. Using the National Agricultural Worker Survey, we find that the ACA policies substantially raised the share of seasonal farmworkers with medical insurance. It significantly increased workers' use of preventive medical services and decreased the use of hospitals, including emergency rooms, which was a goal of the law's proponents. These effects did not significantly differ between workers with and without a pre‐existing medical condition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Does the U.S. Navy’s reliance on objective standards prevent discrimination in promotions and retentions?

  PLoS ONE · 2021-04-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  To prevent discrimination, the U.S. Navy enlisted-personnel promotion process relies primarily on objective measures. However, it also uses the subjective opinion of a sailor's superior. The Navy's promotion and retention process involves two successive decisions: The Navy decides whether to promote an individual, and conditional on that decision, the sailor decides whether to stay. Using estimates of these correlated decision-making processes, we find that during 1997-2008, Blacks and Hispanics were less likely to be promoted than Whites, especially during wartime. The Navy's decision-making affects Blacks' differential promotion rates by twice as much as differences in the groups' characteristics. However, Nonwhite retention probabilities, even when not promoted, are higher than for Whites, in part because they have fewer opportunities in the civilian market. Females have lower promotion rates than males and slightly lower retention rates during wartime.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Informing and inquiring: Experimental evidence on reducing traffic violations

  Journal of Development Economics · 2020 · 7 citations

  • Computer Security
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Security
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Amos Golan

  American University

  60 shared

• Larry S. Karp

  Agricultural & Applied Economics Association

  55 shared

• Ximing Wu

  21 shared

• Jeffrey T. LaFrance

  Monash University

  20 shared

• Hayley H. Chouinard

  Colorado State University

  17 shared

• Guojun He

  University of Hong Kong

  16 shared

• Peter Berck

  University of California, Berkeley

  15 shared

• Joshua Graff Zivin

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  13 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1976

• BA, Economics

  University of Chicago

  1972

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association