Computational Antitrust
Brent Fulton, Associate Director
Public Health
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2023 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2024.
The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and state offices of the attorney general are responsible to promote and protect competition; however, their resources to scrutinize proposed mergers and acquisitions are limited. The purpose of this project is to do background research for utilizing predictive models (enhanced by AI neural networks and reinforcement learning) to predict quality-adjusted post-merger price increases, enabling these regulators to use this type of model as screening tool to help determine which proposed mergers warrant additional scrutiny. For background, please visit Stanford's Law School's Computational Antitrust Project (https://law.stanford.edu/codex-the-stanford-center-for-legal-informatics/computational-antitrust/). Note, I am not affiliated with that center, but I will be conducting separate (but related) research in the healthcare sector, my expertise.
Role: The student will search for and summarize existing studies, and depending on skill level, do analyses and create tables/figures using excel (Google Sheets), and scrape websites for data.
The student's key learning outcome will be gaining a better understanding on how empirical research is conducted within health economics.
Qualifications: Required skills include the following: strong writing skills, proficiency in searching for literature (e.g., Google Scholar). Desirable but not essential skills include the following: background in U.S. healthcare system and health economics (e.g., taken PH150D and/or PH126/Econ157), Zotero reference software within Google docs, Excel/Google Sheets. Hours per week is about 8-10 (so you could select 6-8 or 9-11).
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: We will meet weekly for an hour over Zoom or at 2121 Berkeley Way in the new SPH building.
Related website: https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/people/brent-fulton/
Related website: https://petris.org/