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).

The Trump Administration Attacks the Stigler Report on Digital Platforms

President Trump’s 2020 Economic Report finally confronts the issue of antitrust enforcement both in the traditional economy and in the digital one....

Why a New Digital Authority Is Necessary

A recent Washington Post op-ed claimed that creating a digital authority to regulate Big Tech would be a disaster because of high costs and the...

Uber and the Sherlock Holmes Principle: How Control of Data Can Lead to Biased Academic Research

How can we ensure that academic journals do not become an unintended instrument in the PR efforts of powerful firms? Luigi Zingales offers some...

Trump’s Impeachment Highlights Biden Familial Revolving Door

The President's behavior provides direct evidence of how political power is used to advance personal goals. It has also had the unintended consequence of exposing...

“The Digital Robber Barons Kill Innovation”: the Stigler Center's Report Enters the Senate

In a letter submitted to the record by the US Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust currently investigating Big Tech, Luigi Zingales expounds on the Stigler...

Dear Graduates, Here’s What You Can Do to Change Capitalism For the Better

Delivering UChicago’s 532nd Convocation address, Luigi Zingales advised young graduates to embrace their power as consumers, workers, and citizens and fight corporate monopolies. Dear...

Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index Shows Americans’ Trust in Financial Institutions Increasing After Rocky Decade

Financial trust increased from 22 percent in 2008 to 28 percent at the end of 2018, according to a survey marking the 10-year anniversary...

Subsidies to Amazon Are Uneconomical, Un-American, and Unconstitutional

Corporate subsidies are a negative-sum game. They foster crony capitalism, hurt productivity growth and inflict great harm on product market competition. As soon as Amazon announced...

Does Uber Kill? The Real Cost of Ride-sharing

A new Stigler Center working paper finds that ride-sharing actually increases the number of new car registrations and fatal accidents. Two years ago, the Stigler...

Why Every Good Economist Should Be Feminist

As every good economist knows, markets work best when they are competitive. Therefore, every good economist should also be a feminist, defending a level...

Latest news

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why the Kroger-Albertsons Merger Is a Mess for Consumers

Grocers Kroger and Albertsons want to merge, which would make them the second biggest retail food chain and, according to them, enhance their ability to compete with Walmart and Costco and offer lower prices to consumers. Christine P. Bartholomew writes that the promises of more competition and lower prices for consumers are unlikely to manifest, and thus the Federal Trade Commission should block the deal.  

After Neoliberalism

The following is an excerpt from Martin Daunton's new book, "The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023," out November 14.