Computer Man

Antonio Martner

Ph.D. Student
UCLA
amartner@ucla.edu


I am a Ph.D. student in economics at UCLA. I will be on the job market during the 2025-26 academic year. My research interests are in Macroeconomics and Industrial Organization with a focus on Production Networks.

Working Papers

Aggregating Distortions in Networks with Multi-Product Firms
with Yasutaka Koike-Mori [abstract]

We investigate the role of multiproduct firms in shaping resource misallocation and its impact on aggregate total factor productivity (TFP) growth. Using administrative data on product transactions between all formal Chilean firms, we provide evidence that demand shocks to one product affect the production of other products within the same firm, suggesting that firms engage in joint production. We develop a framework to measure resource misallocation in production networks with joint production, deriving non-parametric sufficient statistics to quantify these effects. Applying the framework to Chile, we find that changes in allocative efficiency explain 86% of the observed aggregate TFP growth for the 2016-2022 period. Ignoring joint production leads to overestimation of changes in allocative efficiency.

Work in Progress

The Aggregate Welfare Effects of Nonlinear Prices in Supply Chains (JMP)
with Luca Lorenzini [abstract]

We study how nonlinear prices in supply chains affect resource allocation, rent distribution, firm entry, and aggregate welfare. We develop a general equilibrium model in which firms both charge and pay nonlinear prices along the supply chain. Relative to linear pricing, nonlinear prices increase firm-level output but reduce firm entry by distorting the distribution of profits, yielding ambiguous welfare effects. Using transaction-level data from Chilean firms, we document robust evidence consistent with widespread nonlinear pricing across buyer groups. Calibrating the model to the data, we find that nonlinear pricing raises production but deters entry. In equilibrium, the output gains dominate: aggregate welfare losses from market power are approximately 18% lower under nonlinear pricing. These findings suggest that models assuming linear pricing may overstate the welfare costs of market power and that, in some contexts, nonlinear pricing can be welfare-enhancing.

The Anatomy of Aggregate Productivity
with Federico Huneeus and Yasutaka Koike-Mori [abstract]

We present an aggregation result that structurally dissects the drivers of aggregate productivity, i.e., technology and the reallocation of resources, across arbitrary parts of the economy using sufficient statistics that can be measured with standard datasets. Besides the typical statistics of factor shares and distortion changes, consumption share changes emerge as new sufficient statistics that capture an income redistribution channel between households. This channel reflects how changes in households' income propagate upstream, influencing the allocation of resources across firms. We apply our results to revisit Chile's aggregate productivity stagnation since 2010, leveraging two decades of administrative firm-to-firm data. This stagnation is almost entirely driven by the reallocation of resources. Exports of mining, domestic output of manufacturing and retail, and incumbent large firms shape the bulk of this stagnation.

Markup Distribution and Inflation Dynamics
with Will Lu and Mario Giarda [abstract]

We study the monthly cyclicality of the markup distribution using tax records for Chile. We find that markups (i) are unconditionally countercyclical; (ii) the countercyclicality is heterogeneous along the markups’ distribution; (iii) markups increase in response to a contractionary monetary policy shock, and (iv) firms with higher average markups have more responsive markups to monetary surprises. We calibrate a model of firm heterogeneity with Kimball demands and show that markup heterogeneity affects inflation dynamics. We show that strategic complementarities flatten the Phillips curve through the correlation between market shares and pass-through from marginal costs to prices.

Teaching

Pre-doctoral work

  1. Firm Shocks, Workers Earnings and the Extensive Margin
    Central Bank of Chile WP 1010, March 2024. with A. Castillo, A.S. León, and M. Tapia
  2. Front-of-package warning label effects on manufacturing labor outcomes in Chile
    Food Policy, 2021, vol. 100, p. 102016. with G. Paraje, A. Colchero, J.M. Wlasiuk, and B.M. Popkin
  3. Misallocation or Misspecification? The Effect of Average Distortions on TFP Gains Estimations
    Central Bank of Chile WP 835, June 2019. with E. Albagli, M. Canales, M. Tapia, and J.M. Wlasiuk
  4. The role of small and medium-sized enterprises in Latin American exports to Asia
    United Nations Publications, 2016.
  5. Window of opportunity of Chile-Guatemala commercial agreement (in Spanish)
    ECLAC Publications, 2014