Martin Schmalz

Martin Schmalz is Professor of Finance and Economics at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He holds a graduate degree (Dipl.-Ing.) in mechanical engineering from the Universität Stuttgart (Germany) and a M.A. and PhD in Economics from Princeton University (USA) . Prof. Schmalz is the Academic Director of Oxford’s Blockchain Strategy Programme, and co-director of the Open Banking & AI in Finance Programme. He co-authored “The Business of Big Data: How to Create Lasting Value in the Age of AI”, and was featured as one of the “40 under 40” best business school professors worldwide at the age of 33. He was invited to present to regulators and policy makers across the globe, including the US Department of Justice, The White House Council of Economic Advisers, European Commission, European Parliament, OECD, various central banks, and at universities across America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. His prize-winning research focuses on corporate governance and asset management. It has been published in The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies, and was covered, among others, by The New York Times, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Bloomberg, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Forbes, Fortune, Handelsblatt, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Is There Really a Conflict Between Better Corporate Governance and More Competitive Product Markets?

A new study shows that the supposed tradeoff between better corporate governance and more competitive product markets may not exist. More commonly-owned...

How Market Power Worsens Income Inequality

Inequality in stock ownership has grown considerably over the past two decades and is far more pronounced than inequality in consumption or income. A...

Why Firms’ Shareholders Condone Seemingly “Excessive” Executive Pay Packages, and What it Means For the Economy

If the large mutual funds are out to improve governance, why do they condone, if not encourage, seemingly excessive and performance-insensitive compensation packages? A new...

Latest news

The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies

The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.

The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines

A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.