On behalf of Finn Kydland’s Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance at UCSB and the International Center for Law & Economics we announce a conference focusing on the topic of market power to be held at the Upham Hotel in Santa Barbara, California, April 10-11, 2026. We seek papers studying who has market power, how they use it, as well as the sources of such power. We seek micro founded work, studying both product- and labor-market outcomes when agents have pricing and/or wage-setting power. Primary consideration will be given to work that uses disciplined modeling techniques to both theoretically and quantitatively study the mechanisms driving various outcomes as they relate to market power, concentration, and markups over marginal cost. We also encourage submissions from authors working with novel datasets that yield rich, new findings. Working papers may be submitted via Conference Maker at the following link: https://editorialexpress.com/conference/MarketPower/. We aim for a late January submission deadline, with decisions to be made by mid February. Organizers will provide hotel and travel accommodations for all invited participants.
The conference organizers are Nick Pretnar (LAEF at UCSB), Yueyuan Ma (UCSB), Brian Albrecht (International Center for Law & Economics), and Tom Phelan (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland).