Matt Stoller

Matt Stoller is the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee.

Merger Guidelines: Taking on a Monopoly Crisis

Matt Stoller lays out the case for the new draft Merger Guidelines, arguing that they incorporate new lessons regarding technology and business practices, while also learning from past mistakes.

GameStop, the Cantillon Effect, and America’s Corrupt Financial Plumbing

The GameStop frenzy, far from a morality tale of the people showing up Wall Street elites, should show that something is seriously...

The Death of Independent Podcasting: What Spotify Is Trying to Do With the Joe Rogan Deal

Spotify is gaining power over podcast distribution by either buying production directly or striking exclusive deals, as it did with Rogan. Once...

Amazon-Owned Movie Theaters: the Next Step in Entertainment Industry Consolidation

Amazon is in talks to buy AMC Theaters, whose business model was jeopardized by the coronavirus pandemic. Other streaming companies, such as...

Here’s How Covid-19 Is Boosting Monopolization and Market Power

Monopolization and consolidation can happen for what seem to be good, or least necessary, reasons. How we respond as a society depends...

How the Tension Between Big Business and Antitrust Will Reshape Post-Covid America

Big Business is going to be structuring the response to the pandemic, at least temporarily. A new generation of leaders and thinkers...

The Coronavirus Crisis Has Exposed Private Equity’s Unsustainable Business Model

Private equity portfolio companies are heavily indebted, and they aren’t generating enough cash to service debts. The steady increase in asset values...

The Cantillon Effect: Why Wall Street Gets a Bailout and You Don’t

According to the 18th-century French banker and philosopher Richard Cantillon, who benefits when the state prints money is based on its institutional setup. In...

The Populist Right Has a Plan to Take Power Away From Financiers and Challenge China

The nationalist rhetoric of the Trump administration can obscure a more sophisticated recognition by some people in the populist world that the core dynamic...

How Private Equity Companies Are Lobbying to Profit from The Covid-19 Economic Fallout

Private equity funds aren’t just seeking to save the investments they already have, but to get access to more capital to invest in a...

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.