Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am, Apr. 8th, 2026
Speaker: Francesco Decarolis
(2026 Agnelli Chair of Italian Culture of Peking University, Professor in Economics at Bocconi University)
Venue: Zhifuxuan Classroom, Langrun Garden, Peking University
Abstract:
The digital advertising industry relies on specialized intermediaries to facilitate advertisers' access to online ad space. This paper studies vertical complementarities in this market by estimating a structural model of advertiser-agency matching using novel data and methods for many-to-many matching in large markets. We quantify the value created by matches and introduce a machine-learning approach to infer agents' consideration sets. The results show that advertisers benefit from being affiliated with the same agency network as their competitors, even though they do not necessarily prefer to share the same agencies. We also document the role of industry specialization, exclusive contracting, and relationship persistence. Finally, we illustrate the policy relevance of our framework by evaluating the potential effects of the Omnicom–IPG merger, showing how network-level consolidation can generate heterogeneous advertiser gains.
Speaker:
Prof. Francesco Decarolis is the 2026 Agnelli Chair of Italian Culture of Peking University. He is a renowned economist, Full Professor of Economics at Bocconi University in Italy, and a leading scholar in the field of industrial organization and competition in digital markets. He is also a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and serves as Associate Editor of two top-tier academic journals, Econometrica and The Review of Economic Studies. He has been awarded research grants by the European Research Council (ERC) twice, receiving both an ERC Starting Grant and an ERC Consolidator Grant.
His research focuses on industrial organization and applied microeconomics, with core research areas including competition economics, antitrust policy, market design, public procurement, and the regulation of digital platforms. The central theme of his research is how market rules, institutional design and regulatory frameworks influence firms' incentive mechanisms, competitive market outcomes and social welfare.
