On June 24th, 2016, Dr. Reed walker gave talks about “Energy Prices, Pass-Through, and Incidence in U.S. Manufacturing” in CEEP.

　　The report was hosted by Prof. Hua Liao, some other teachers and students attended the seminar and had an in-depth discussion of this topic. Dr. Reed walker’s report studies how increases in energy input costs for production are split between consumers and producers via changes in product prices (i.e., pass-through). He shows that in markets characterized by imperfect competition, marginal cost pass-through, a demand elasticity, and a price-cost markup are sufficient to characterize the relative change in welfare between producers and consumers due to a change in input costs. He finds that increases in energy prices lead to higher plant-level marginal costs and output prices but lower markups. This suggests that marginal cost pass-through is incomplete, with estimates centered around 0.7. His confidence intervals reject both zero pass-through and complete pass-through. He finds heterogenous incidence of changes in input prices across industries, though in all industries consumers bear a smaller share of the burden than standards methods suggest.

　　Reed Walker is an assistant professor of Economics and Business and Public Policy at the University of California. His research explores the social costs of environmental externalities such as air pollution and how regulations to limit these externalities contribute to welfare gains and/or losses in various factor and product markets. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia University.
His articles appear in economics journals such as American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies. (https://w-reed-walker.com/)
After this lecture, teachers and students from CEEP-BIT had a heated discussion with Dr. Reed walker and had a picture taken together.