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
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Book Excerpts
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Democracy
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
The Impact of Algorithms on Competition and Competition Law
Antonio Capobianco, the deputy head of the OECD Competition Division and one of the authors of the 2023 OECD report on algorithmic competition and collusion, explains the risks that algorithms and artificial intelligence pose to competition and how regulators can approach the changing competition paradigm.