Assistant Prof. Dr. Hendrik Döpper receives the 2025 Schwarz-Schütte Prize for the best publication by a young scientist. The jury particularly praised his study “Rising Markups and the Role of Consumer Preferences,” written in collaboration with international co-authors and published in the Journal of Political Economy.
In this study, Döpper analyzes the price development of consumer goods in the US over a period of more than a decade. The key finding is that companies' price markups have risen significantly since the mid-2000s – by around 30 percent on average. The key point is that this increase is not primarily due to higher prices. Rather, the results show that falling production costs and changes in consumer price sensitivity are giving companies greater leeway in setting prices.
The study combines state-of-the-art econometric methods with exceptionally detailed market data, providing new insights into the causes of increasing market power. At the same time, it highlights the distributional effects of this development: while consumer welfare is growing overall, it is primarily households with higher incomes that are benefiting.