Marshall Steinbaum

Marshall Steinbaum is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and Senior Fellow in Higher Education Finance at the Jain Family Institute.

Missing the Forest for the Trees: A Reply to Hovenkamp and Shapiro

The Federal Trade Commission’s now-abandoned 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines were not some ideal economic document that the FTC foolishly disregarded; rather, they...

Antitrust as Economic Stimulus

By attacking power imbalances, competition policy can steer income to workers and independent merchants who are more inclined to spend than monopoly...

Policy Failure: The Role of “Economics” in AT&T-Time Warner and American Express

The recent AT&T and Amex decisions showcase the pitfalls of considering antitrust cases solely on the basis of economic analysis and may have the...

Antitrust in the Labor Market: Protectionist, or Pro-Competitive?

Redirecting antitrust enforcement to confront monopsony power would be a substantial departure from the way it has been conducted in recent decades, but just...

Monopsony Takes Center Stage

Bringing the powerful weapons the federal competition authorities have to bear on the problem of monopsony would be a substantial, but necessary departure from recent...

One Happy Byproduct of 2016: An Overdue Tax Policy Debate

Rich people are much richer than they used to be in large part because they pay much less tax than they used to. This—not...

What Role for Antitrust in the Era of Rising Inequality? The Importance of Power in Supply Chains

Concentration of power in supply chains is a prime mechanism by which dominant companies consolidate power and profits. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was...

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.