Carl Shapiro

Co-developed with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz in their 1984 paper, the model shows that firms can deter worker shirking by paying wages above the market-clearing level. The threat of losing a high-paying job serves as a disciplinary device, which results in equilibrium unemployment as a worker incentive mechanism.

Shapiro served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration. In that role he helped shape merger enforcement and competition policy in technology markets, and he later returned to a similar role early in the Biden administration.

Shapiro co-authored 'Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy' with Hal Varian in 1999, applying economic principles to the information technology and digital economy. The book became a foundational text in the economics of technology and platform markets.

Shapiro is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on antitrust economics, intellectual property, and the economics of technology industries, with particular attention to platform competition and network effects.