Seminar – The Dynamics of Technology Adoption & Vertical Restraints: An Empirical Analysis

Professor Michelle Sovinsky, University of Mannheim

This paper studies the impact of vertical restraints in the x86 processor industry, where a dominant upstream supplier (Intel) competes with a smaller contender, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). During the studied period, Intel’s strategy included a controversial program, “Intel Inside,” through which it offered downstream clients rebates and subsidies that were conditioned on the volume purchased from it and, sometimes, on the volume purchased from AMD. We document the manner by which such restraints interact with the dynamic process of downstream technology adoption. Our preliminary results indicate, first, that Intel’s restraints were binding: restrictions imposed on a downstream client reduced the rate of its AMD adoption. They also illustrate the role played by dynamics and downstream clients’ expectations: we find that (i) adoption of the AMD technology by a given downstream firm was negatively affected by restrictions imposed on other downstream firms, and that (ii) adoption was an increasing function of the intensity of antitrust litigation against Intel.

Speaker bio

Michelle Sovinsky is a Professor of Economics at the University of Mannheim, a research fellow of the Center of Economic Policy Research (CEPR), an associate of the University of Chicago Becker Friedman Institute, and a research fellow of the Economics Network for Competition and Regulation. She received her PhD in Economics at the University of Virginia and has been on the faculty in the United States (at the University of Southern California) and in Europe and has held visiting professorships in the US, Europe, and Australia.

She currently serves on the executive board of European Association for Research in Industrial Economics Society (EARIE) and has served on the panel for EARIE and the European Economics Association meetings many times. She was the EARIE Scientific Program Chair in 2015. She is also a co-editor at the International Journal of Industrial Organization and on the Editoral Panel of Economic Policy.

Her research focuses on using game-theoretic modeling with empirical analysis to examine policy issues in industrial organisation and applied health. Her research covers a wide range of topics including individual-decision making under limited information and the implications for firms’ decisions and market power; and the antitrust implications of research collaboration or advertising expenditures; the analysis of decisions concerning long-term care for the elderly; and how individuals make risky decisions concerning their health, drug use, or eating behaviours.

Her research has implications for the design of public health policy and antitrust/competition policy and has been published in American Economic Review, Econometrica, the International Economic Review, and the Journal of Human Resources.

She received an ERC Consolidators Grant for the period 2017-2022 for the project “Illicit Products, Unknown Competitors, and Illegal Behavior” (FORENSICS), which the ERC supports with over 1.2 million euros.