Welcome! I am a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of Chicago.
My research interests are in industrial organization and urban economics, primarily in commercial real estate and retail.
I am on the 2024-2025 academic job market.
You can find my CV here.
Distributional Effects of Exclusive Dealing in Retail Real Estate (JMP)
Abstract: We study the welfare implications of exclusive dealing in the US retail sector. Using a novel dataset, we document widespread use of exclusive dealing contracts that exclude local entry by rival stores. Public officials increasingly critique such practices as anti-competitive. At the same time, the extant literature on exclusive dealing has also shown that these contracts can stimulate entry into otherwise under-served markets. Descriptive analysis suggests that stores with exclusive dealing contracts face fewer competitors and higher prices. At the same time, almost all major grocers in under-served neighborhoods have exclusive dealing contracts, suggesting they might encourage entry in low-demand settings. We use a structural approach to measure the counterfactual impact of a ban on exclusive dealing. We estimate a model of household-level store choices that accounts for price sensitivity, distance sensitivity and the potential complementarities between co-located stores. Upstream, we estimate a static entry game between retailers and landlords that accounts for downstream variable profits and information asymmetry between retailers and landlords. We find that exclusive dealing benefits most landlords, large retailers, as well as households living in sparse retail environments. We find that banning exclusive dealing would increase welfare for some households, but would cause an increase in the number of households living in food deserts.
Buck Wild: The Impact of the Dollar Store on Households and Local Retail Competition
Presented at: Food Access at Dollar Stores (FADS) Workshop (2022), Urban Economics Association European Meeting (2023)
Vertical Integration in Commercial Real Estate (with J. Yue)
Monopoly and Monopsony Power in Meatpacking (with J. Battles and C. Palandri)
The Effect of Slaughterhouses on Water Quality (with J. Battles and C. Palandri)
Scalable Production of Molybdenum Disulfide Based Biosensors C. H. Naylor, N. J. Kybert, C. Schneier, J. Xi, G. Romero, J. G. Saven, R. Liu, and A. T. C. Johnson ACS Nano 2016 10 (6), 6173-6179.
Math Camp Lecturer (Ph.D., MA). Summer 2022.
Industrial Organization (Undergraduate) -- TA for Michael Dinerstein. Spring 2022.
Labor Economics (Ph.D.) -- TA for Thibaut Lamadon. Fall 2021.
Econometrics (Undergraduate) -- TA for Oscar Volpe. Fall 2021.
Classical Mechanics (Undergraduate) -- TA for Bill Ashmanskas. Fall 2015.
You can email me at cschneier AT uchicago DOT edu.