Michelle Sovinsky is a Professor of Economics at the University of Mannheim, a research fellow of the Center of Economic Policy Research (CEPR), an associate of the University of Chicago Becker Friedman Institute, and a research fellow of the Economics Network for Competition and Regulation. 

She currently serves on the executive board of European Association for Research in Industrial Economics Society (EARIE) and has served on the panel for EARIE and the European Economics Association meetings many times.  She was the EARIE Scientific Program Chair in 2015.  She is also a co-editor at the International Journal of Industrial Organization and on the Editoral Panel of Economic Policy. 

Her research focuses on using game-theoretic modeling with empirical analysis to examine policy issues in industrial organization and applied health. Her research covers a wide range of topics including individual-decision making under limited information and the implications for firms’ decisions and market power; and the antitrust implications of research collaboration or advertising expenditures; the analysis of decisions concerning long-term care for the elderly; and how individuals make risky decisions concerning their health, drug use, or eating behaviors. 

Her research has implications for the design of public health policy and antitrust/competition policy and has been published in American Economic Review, Econometrica, the International Economic Review, and the Journal of Human Resources. 

She received an ERC Consolidators Grant for the period 2017-2022 for the project “Illicit Products, Unknown Competitors, and Illegal Behavior" (FORENSICS), which the ERC supports with over 1.2 million Euros.  (https://erc.europa.eu/press_release/erc-consolidator-grant-2016-project-examples.)

Sovinsky received a B.S. in Economics from George Mason University in 1994, and a M.A. and Ph.D. both in Economics from University of Virginia in 1998 and 2002 respectively.