Carl Shapiro
Carl Shapiro is Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business and the Department of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Shapiro had the honor of serving as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during 2011-12. For the two years immediately prior to that, he was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; he also held that position during 1995-96. Shapiro is the co-author, with Hal R. Varian, of Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Shapiro has published extensively in the areas of industrial organization, competition policy, patents, the economics of innovation, and competitive strategy. Shapiro also has testified as an expert witness on behalf of the government in a number of important antitrust cases.
Antitrust and Competition
Carl Shapiro: How Would These Draft Guidelines Work in Practice?
Carl Shapiro provides his round-two comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.
Antitrust and Competition
Carl Shapiro: Why Dropping Market Power from the Merger Guidelines Matters
Carl Shapiro provides his round-one comments on the draft Merger Guidelines.
Antitrust and Competition
How Will the FTC Evaluate Vertical Mergers?
The Federal Trade Commission’s recent withdrawal of its 2020 vertical merger guidelines is flatly incorrect as a matter of microeconomic theory and...
Latest news
Antitrust and Competition
Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists
Former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy Tim Wu responds to the November 27 letter signed by former chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Antitrust Division calling for a separation of the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines.
Book Reviews
Can the Public Moderate Social Media?
ProMarket student editor Surya Gowda reviews the arguments made by Paul Gowder in his new book, The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.
Income Inequality
Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy
In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?
Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.
Antitrust and Competition
The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition
Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.
Research
Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation
Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.
Antitrust and Competition
Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines
Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.
