Improving the Discovery of Health Data in a Domain Repository

Presentation to the NIH Behavioral and Social Science Roundtable, Bethesda, MarylandPresentation to the NIH Behavioral and Social Science Roundtable, Bethesda, MarylandNational Institutes of Healthhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145728/1/Levenstein NIH BSSRCC October 5 2018 FINALpptx.pptxhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145728/3/Levenstein NIH BSSRCC October 5 2018.pd

Cartels and Collusion - Empirical Evidence

Chapter prepared for publication in Oxford Handbook on International Antitrust Economics, Roger D. Blair and D. Daniel Sokol, editors. Cartels occur in a wide range of industries and engage in a wide range of behaviors in their efforts to increase profits. In this chapter, we discuss the wide variety of techniques that cartels use to increase prices and profits. Studies of national and international markets across the twentieth century find cartels in a wide variety of products and services, and these cartels typically last between five and eight years. The most important determinant of cartel breakup is effective antitrust policy. While it has often been presumed that cartels’ demise results from cheating by member firms tempted by short term profits, empirical analysis suggests that cheating rarely destroys cartels. The potential profits from collusion provide sufficient incentives for cartels to develop creative ways to limit the temptations that inevitably arise. While scholars and policy makers have often been concerned that business cycle downturns are associated with cartel formation, the evidence we review here does not suggest strong cyclical effects. There is evidence that cartels are formed during periods of falling prices, but these are more likely to be the result of market integration or an increase in competitive intensity than macroeconomic fluctuations. Similarly, cartel breakup does not evidence strong cyclicality.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/94308/1/1182_MLevenstein.pd

Transparency, Reproducibility, and Replicability

Presentation at the American Statistical Association's Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver, Canada, July 29, 2018. Session on Transparency, Reproducibility, and ReplicabilityFrontier social science and evidence-based policy analyses increasingly rely on large-scale, naturally occurring data, such as administrative, transaction, and social media data. These data capture phenomena at higher frequency, lower cost, and greater timeliness than traditional methods. Using naturally occurring data for analytic purposes is not free, requiring management of governance and custody, processing, and linking to other data. Without methods for preservation and access, with appropriate provenance, naturally occurring data may be re-produced again and again, at high cost. The cost is not simply in dollars and time. There is significant cost to science, as replication is impossible. Naturally occurring data naturally changes. Analyses repeated on data without proper documentation, versioning, or provenance vary from one another for reasons having nothing to do with underlying science. The Inter-university Consortium for Social and Political Research has for over 55 years curated and disseminated social science data for re-use and replication. This paper presents steps ICPSR is taking to develop tools and protocols, including a new repository of data linkage algorithms.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145176/3/JSM Transparency & Reproducibility 2018.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145176/6/JSM Transparency & Reproducibility 2018.pdfDescription of JSM Transparency & Reproducibility 2018.pdf : Presentatio

Zone Overlap and Collaboration in Academic Biomedicine: A Functional Proximity Approach to Socio-Spatial Network Analysis

Spatial layouts can have significant influences on the formation and outcomes of social relationships. Physical proximity is thus essential to understanding the elemental building blocks of social networks, dyads. Situating relationships in space is instrumental to formulating better models of collaboration and information-sharing in organizations and more robust theories of networks and their effects. We propose, develop, and test a concept, the functional zone, which effectively captures Festinger et al’s (1950) classic description of ‘functional distance’ as pertains to social interactions. We operationalize our functional zone concept with measures of path and areal zone overlap. At two biomedical research buildings with different layouts (compact versus linear), regression analyses of collaboration rates show that increasing path overlap increases collaboration in both buildings. In contrast more traditional distance measures only influence collaboration in the more linear building. The functional zone concept improves our ability to understand relationships and their attendant organizational outcomes.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95706/1/1184_MLevenstein.pd

Research Standards in Criminology

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156394/3/Levenstein Arnold Research Standards in Criminology August 2020.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156394/1/Levenstein Arnold Research Standards in Criminology August 2020.pdfSEL

Private Monitoring and Communication in Cartels: Explaining Recent Collusive Practices

Motivated by recent cartel practices, a stable collusive agreement is characterized when firms' prices and quantities are private information. Conditions are derived whereby an equilibrium exists in which firms truthfully report their sales and then make transfers within the cartel based on these reports. The properties of this equilibrium fit well with the cartel agreements in a number of markets including citric acid, lysine, and vitamins. (JEL D43, D82, K21, L12, L61, L65)

Managing Research and Data for Reproducibility and Transparency

Presentation at the OPRE Open Science Methods Meeting, October 2019http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156406/1/Levenstein OPRE 2019 FINAL.pdfDescription of Levenstein OPRE 2019 FINAL.pdf : PresentationSEL

Best Practices for Protecting and Sharing Data

Presented as part of Session on The Conflict Between Research Transparency and Respondent Confidentiality at the 73rd Annual Conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Denver, Colorado on May 17, 2018ICPSR's approach to safe and ethical research using confidential datahttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144521/1/AAPOR 2018.pd

Breaking up is Hard to Do: Determinants of Cartel Duration

We estimate the impact of cartel organizational features, as well as macroeconomic fluctuations and industry structure, on cartel duration using a dataset of contemporary international cartels. We estimate a proportional hazards model with competing risks, distinguishing factors which increase the risk of “death by antitrust” from those that affect “natural death,” including defection, dissension or entry. Our analysis indicates that the probability of cartel death from any cause increased significantly after 1995 when competition authorities expanded enforcement efforts toward international cartels. We find that fluctuations in firm-specific discount rates have a significant effect on cartel duration, whereas market interest rates do not. Cartels with a compensation scheme – a plan for how the cartel will handle variations in demand – are significantly less likely to break up. In contrast, retaliatory punishments in response to perceived cheating significantly increase the likelihood of natural death. Cartels that have to punish are not stable cartels.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78004/1/1150_Suslow.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78004/3/1150_Suslow.pd