Marianne Bertrand

Marianne Bertrand is the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Institute for the Study of Labor. Professor Bertrand is Faculty Director of Chicago Booth’s Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation and the Faculty Director of the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago Urban Labs. Professor Bertrand also serves as co-editor of the American Economic Review.

Investing in Influence: Investors, Portfolio Firms, and Political Giving

A new paper examines the relationship between the rising concentration in institutional investors' ownership of publicly traded U.S. firms and portfolio companies'...

“Comments for Sale”: Charitable Donations Can Lead Non-profits to Support Corporate Regulatory Agendas

A new paper shows how financial ties between companies and non-profits can subvert rulemaking process and lead to regulations that favor the...

Covid-19 Aggravates Existing Income, Gender, and Race Inequalities, and Further Increases Political Divisions

Seventy percent of Americans know someone who tested positive; one in five know someone who died from coronavirus, survey shows.

Covid-19 Is Reducing Americans’ Confidence Across Institutions

Latest US household survey findings reveal that the Covid-19 crisis caused a sharp reduction in Americans’ confidence in institutions—whether or not they...

Strength in Numbers: Using Data to Track Diversity and Inclusion

Recent protests against racism and police brutality, along with the #MeToo movement, have increased pressure on businesses to measure and improve their...

How Personal Experiences With Covid-19 Are Changing Americans’ Behaviors and Political Views

While strong divisions persist across party lines, personal experiences with Covid-19, such as loss of income, may affect views and preferences among...

When and How the US Should Reopen Is a Matter of Politics, Trust in Institutions and Media, Survey Says

A new survey from the Rustandy Center and the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago finds that political party affiliation and...

How Are Americans Coping With the Covid-19 Crisis? 7 Key Findings From a Household Survey

New research from the Rustandy Center and the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago finds that lower-income Americans, especially women,...

How Has the Covid-19 Crisis Affected Hourly Workers at Small Businesses?

Since the coronavirus crisis began, firms have dramatically reduced employee hours. By March 28, total hours declined over 70 percent in states with the...

When Taxpayers Subsidize Corporate Lobbying: How Firms Use Charitable Giving to Influence Politics

A new Stigler Center working paper examines a more roundabout way that companies can influence legislators: by donating money to charities in lawmakers’ districts....

Latest news

A World With Far Fewer Mergers

Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.

The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies

The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.

The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines

A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.

The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project

In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.

Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals

Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard  is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.