Luigi Zingales

Luigi Zingales is the Robert C. Mc Cormack Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago - Booth School of Business. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic Policy Research, and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute. His research interests span from corporate governance to financial development, from political economy to the economic effects of culture. He has published extensively in the major economics and financial journals. In 2003, Zingales received the Bernacer Prize for the best European young financial economist. In 2013 he has been named founding director of the Center for Economic Analysis of the PCAOB. In 2014 he served as President of the American Finance Association. He is co-author with Raghuram G. Rajan of “Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists” (2003) and author of “A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity” (2012). His latest book is “Europa o no” (2014).

Destabilizing Digital “Bank Walks”

Bank regulators have always assumed that bank deposits are ‘sticky,’ but the advent of digital banking is changing that. New research focuses...

Bethany and Luigi’s 2022 Book Recommendations

Capitalisn't hosts Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean offer their recommended books from 2022 for ProMarket readers.

Shareholder Democracy Doesn’t Work. Here’s How It Can.

An opinion piece by Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales describes how a new voting mechanism could help individual investors persuade companies to...

Antitrust Enforcement, Inflation and Corporate Greed: What do we know?

At a recent Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) event, panelists, including the Stigler Center's own Luigi Zingales, reflected on the roles...

The Mechanisms of Regulatory Capture

To mark the 50-year anniversary of George Stigler’s seminal piece, “The Theory of Economic Regulation” we are publishing a new eBook examining...

A Call for Comments: Have You Been Affected by Academic Gatekeeping?

On Friday, ProMarket published a piece by Renée Adams about the impact of academic gatekeeping in political finance. Do you have a...

The Incoming Currency War

Four powerful forces—cryptocurrencies, the decoupling of geographical and monetary boundaries, ad-based digital platforms’ foray into the world of payments, and the value...

Economic Regulation After George Stigler

George Stigler’s “The Theory of Economic Regulation” has left a lasting impact on the academic and real-world practice of regulatory policy. Fifty...

The Silent Coup

President Donald Trump's seditious actions are exposing the political power that Twitter, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook enjoy. Banning him from their...

How Pfizer’s Vaccine Announcement Demonstrates the Political Power of Firms

By timing the disclosure of the results of its vaccine trial, Pfizer could have influenced the 2020 presidential election. This is worrisome...

Latest news

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.

Debating the Draft Merger Guidelines: Transcript

On September 7, the Stigler Center hosted a webinar to discuss the draft merger guidelines. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the event.