Salma Nassar

Salma Nassar is the Director of Research Initiatives at the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is responsible for growing and supporting the center’s research agenda. Nassar works closely with Booth faculty and PhD students to develop research projects, manage research partnerships, and lead data collection projects. She holds a Masters of International Development Policy from Georgetown University and an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in business both from DePaul University.

Covid-19 Aggravates Existing Income, Gender, and Race Inequalities, and Further Increases Political Divisions

Seventy percent of Americans know someone who tested positive; one in five know someone who died from coronavirus, survey shows.

Covid-19 Is Reducing Americans’ Confidence Across Institutions

Latest US household survey findings reveal that the Covid-19 crisis caused a sharp reduction in Americans’ confidence in institutions—whether or not they...

How Personal Experiences With Covid-19 Are Changing Americans’ Behaviors and Political Views

While strong divisions persist across party lines, personal experiences with Covid-19, such as loss of income, may affect views and preferences among...

When and How the US Should Reopen Is a Matter of Politics, Trust in Institutions and Media, Survey Says

A new survey from the Rustandy Center and the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago finds that political party affiliation and...

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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.

The State of The Debate on U.S. Antitrust and Competition

This year’s Stigler Center conference on antitrust and competition invited scholars to propose alternatives to the consumer welfare standard.