Brooke Fox

Brooke Fox is the Managing Editor of the political economy publication, ProMarket, at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy. She specializes in communicating research, data and financial and economic concepts to a variety of audiences. Prior to her roles at the University of Chicago she worked as a reporter on the Visual and Data Journalism team at the Financial Times in New York City.

The State of The Debate on U.S. Antitrust and Competition

This year’s Stigler Center conference on antitrust and competition invited scholars to propose alternatives to the consumer welfare standard.

Changing Accounting Rules for Banks can Incentivize Better Risk Mitigation

Accounting procedures for held-to-maturity assets in banks allows them to avoid taking losses. Research from professors Bischof, Laux, and Leuz shows how...

Nobel Laureate Douglas Diamond on How the Fed Could Have Prevented SVB’s Collapse

Nobel Laureate and bank run expert Douglas Diamond argues that the Fed’s choice to signal long-term low interest rates, and then suddenly...

Chart of the Week: Concentration in Ticket-Selling Market Produces Costly Outcomes

Economists overwhelmingly agree that the lack of competition in the market for ticket-selling intermediaries leads to attendees paying more, according to a...

Survey Highlights Backlash to Increasingly Political Corporate America

A recent poll shows that 71% of Americans view large companies negatively. The change has been driven by Republicans who dislike the...

Fighting New Antitrust Rules Is a Bad Move for Big Tech

With new limits on platforms taking effect in the EU and U.S. politicians showing greater willingness to defy tech titans, companies would...

Researchers Find Reduced Competition After Pandemic

The chart of the week comes from a new research paper that documents the increase in small business closures during the Covid...

Healthcare Companies Spent More on Lobbying Than Any Other Industry Last Year

Threatened by regulated price caps from congress, the pharmaceutical industry spent nearly $390 million on lobbying in 2021 according to new data...

Chart of the Week: Economists Don’t Think Congress Should Make Price Gouging Illegal

Most economists disagree with a new bill in the US that would set limits on "unconscionably excessive prices," according to a recent...

Larry Summers Cautions Antitrust Regulators Against Broad-Brush Policy

In a wide-ranging interview with ProMarket, Summers expands on recent criticism of top antitrust enforcement officials, efforts to stymie Big Tech, monopsony,...

Latest news

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.

Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization

In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.