Evan Starr
Dr. Evan Starr is an Associate Professor of Management & Organization at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. His research examines issues at the intersection of employee mobility, human capital, entrepreneurship, and technology. He is particularly interested in the impacts of post-employment restrictions on workers and firms. Dr. Starr has authored more than a dozen articles in leading journals in economics and management and testified in front of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. His research has been covered in major news outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, NPR, Financial Times, and The Washington Post. Formerly a professor at the University of Illinois, Dr. Starr received his PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan and a BA from Denison University.
Antitrust and Competition
The Ties that Bind Workers to Firms: No-Poach Agreements, Noncompetes, and Other Ways Firms Create and Exercise Labor Market Power
Collusive no-poach agreements are per se illegal, but noncompete clauses are not. Recent research casts doubt on the rationale for this legal...
Antitrust and Competition
Banning Noncompete Agreements Benefits Low-Wage Workers
Examining the effects of a 2008 ban on noncompete agreements for low-wage workers in Oregon, a recent paper finds that the ban increased average...
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.
