astronomy

Jan Eeckhout

Jan Eeckhout is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jan Eeckhout rather than just read about it. In short: Jan Eeckhout is a Belgian economist. He is an ICREA Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and at the Barcelona School of Economics.

Key takeaways

Jan Eeckhout belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jan Eeckhout to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jan Eeckhout from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jan Eeckhout is a Belgian economist. He is an ICREA Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and at the Barcelona School of Economics. Eeckhout is known for his research on the macroeconomic implications of market power, as well as his contributions to the economics of labor markets. He served as President of the European Economic Association in 2024 and is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Member of the Academia Europaea.

Education Eeckhout obtained a degree in Engineering and Economics from KU Leuven in 1992 and a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Manchester in 1993. He earned his PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1998.

Career Eeckhout began his academic career as a Lecturer in Economics at the London School of Economics in 1996–1997. He joined the Department of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in 1997 and held a Marie Curie Fellowship there in 1998–1999. From 2000 to 2010 he was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he became Associate Professor with tenure and was voted Full Professor in 2010. Between 2011 and 2019, Eeckhout was Professor of Economics at University College London. He returned to UPF as an ICREA Research Professor in 2008, a position he continues to hold, and since 2019 he has also been a research professor at the Barcelona School of Economics. Eeckhout served as president of the European Economic Association in 2024 and is a member of the executive committee and council of the Econometric Society. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, an associate researcher at the Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI), and a research associate at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He is currently the founding editor of Review of Economic Studies: Insights. In the past, he has been editor of the International Economic Review and has served on the editorial boards of the Review of Economic Dynamics, the Journal of Economic Theory, and the Journal of the European Economic Association. He was chair of the European Research Council Consolidator Grant panel in 2024.

Research Eeckhout’s research lies at the intersection of macroeconomics, labor economics, and industrial organization, combining theoretical models with empirical analysis to examine market power, assortative matching, and urban economics. A central strand of his work documents the rise of market power in the global economy and its macroeconomic implications. In The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications (2020), co-authored with Jan De Loecker and Gabriel Unger, he uses firm-level data to show that aggregate markups in the United States have increased substantially since 1980, a development linked to declining labor shares of income, reduced labor market dynamism, and stagnant wages for low-skilled workers. These themes are synthesized for a broader audience in his book The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work (2021), which argues that highly productive firms adopt new technologies efficiently but use their market power to limit competition and exert monopsony power in labor markets, leading to higher consumer prices, lower wages, and increased economic inequality. His research has also contributed to debates associated with the “New Brandeis” approach to antitrust policy. In labor economics, Eeckhout has made notable contributions to the study of matching and sorting, particularly assortative matching between workers and firms. In Identifying Sorting—In Theory (2011), co-authored with Philipp Kircher, he develops theoretical frameworks for identifying sorting patterns in frictional labor markets and for distinguishing among different forms of worker–firm complementarities. In urban economics, his work on city size distributions is widely cited. His 2004 article in the American Economic Review provides empirical support for Gibrat's law for cities, showing that city growth rates are independent of initial size and generate a log-normal distribution of city sizes across the entire urban system, rather than only in the upper tail described by Zipf's law.

Awards and honors Kravis Award, University of Pennsylvania, 2002 and 2005 Fellow of the European Economic Association, elected 2012 Member of the Academia Europaea, elected 2014 Fellow of the Econometric Society, elected 2019 William G. Bowen Book Award, Princeton University, 2021 ERC Advanced Grant, 2024 King Jaume I Award, 2025

Selected publications “Gibrat’s Law for (All) Cities,” American Economic Review, 2004. “Identifying Sorting—In Theory” (with P. Kircher), Review of Economic Studies, 2011. “Spatial Sorting” (with R. Pinheiro and K. Schmidheiny), Journal of Political Economy, 2014. “Global Market Power” (with J. De Loecker), National Bureau of Economic Research. “The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications” (with J. De Loecker and G. Unger), Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2020. The Profit Paradox: How Thriving Firms Threaten the Future of Work (Princeton University Press, 2021). Translated into Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Catalan, Persian, and Japanese.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jan Eeckhout

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jan Eeckhout claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jan Eeckhout before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jan Eeckhout ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jan Eeckhout

In research: Jan Eeckhout appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jan Eeckhout in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jan Eeckhout is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic staff of Pompeu Fabra University, Academics of University College London, Academics of the London School of Economics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jan Eeckhout outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jan Eeckhout in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jan Eeckhout means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jan Eeckhout out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jan Eeckhout in simple terms?

Jan Eeckhout is a Belgian economist. He is an ICREA Research Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and at the Barcelona School of Economics.

Why does Jan Eeckhout matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jan Eeckhout?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jan Eeckhout.