Alex Edmans
Alex Edmans is a Professor of Finance at London Business School and Academic Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance. He also serves as Managing Editor of the Review of Finance and Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial Economics, and is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the European Corporate Governance Institute. Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business, and behavioral finance. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talk The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.3 million views. Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was named to the Financial Times Business Books of the Year for 2020.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
The Social Responsibility of Business Includes Profits
Profits these days are often seen as a dirty word, but it is wrong to demonize profits. A company’s responsibility is not...
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
Two Years Later, Has the Business Roundtable Statement Transformed Capitalism?
Two years after the Business Roundtable redefined its statement of Purpose of a Corporation to include “a fundamental commitment to all of...
Economic History
What Stakeholder Capitalism Can Learn From Jensen and Meckling
Jensen and Meckling’s 1976 article is an academic classic, but heavily criticized by stakeholder capitalists for arguing that corporate structures should be...
News
What Stakeholder Capitalism Can Learn From Milton Friedman
Instead of ridiculing the Friedman doctrine and proclaiming its death, advocates of stakeholder capitalism and responsible investing, like me, can learn a...
Latest news
Antitrust and Competition
How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors
Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.
Antitrust and Competition
Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation
The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.
Economic History
How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism
In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.
Antitrust and Competition
The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect
In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.
Antitrust and Competition
The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses
Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.
Commentary
We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry
Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.
Antitrust and Competition
Debating the Draft Merger Guidelines: Transcript
On September 7, the Stigler Center hosted a webinar to discuss the draft merger guidelines. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the event.
