Prateek Raj

Prateek Raj studies how free and inclusive markets evolve(d) in history, and in developing countries. Prateek is an Assistant Professor in Strategy at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) and IIMB Young Faculty Research Chair, leading the IIMB Inclusive Markets Project. He is also a Junior Fellow at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

How Twitter Weakened India’s Information Ecosystem

India’s Covid-19 crisis is a reminder that Indian democracy is also in a crisis, partly due to an information ecosystem where facts...

We Need to Deal With WhatsApp's Misinformation Problem

A peculiar feature of WhatsApp groups has made the spread of misinformation much easier. We need better design guidelines for platforms like WhatsApp, ones...

Prize-Winning Innovations in Measuring Civic Capital and Its Effects

The European Economic Association has announced that this year’s Hicks Tinbergen medal will go to ProMarket editor and Stigler Center faculty director Luigi Zingales...

A Tale of Two Cities: Hamburg and Lübeck

The German cities of Hamburg and Lübeck have an interwoven and eventful history. Whereas Lübeck offers an example of how dominant cities may become unattractive...

How Markets in Europe Opened Up as Guild Monopolies Declined in the Sixteenth Century

Markets don’t function well if they are ridden with frictions like lack of information or lack of trust. A new working paper finds that...

"Antimonopoly Is as Old as the Republic"

Should the U.S. enforce more explicit restrictions on monopolies, or can innovation and democracy alone mitigate the pervasive effects of monopoly power? A panel of...

Can Narratives Shape Society?

Narratives that alter beliefs and change norms or guiding principles may indeed have real and lasting effects.  In the 2017 American Economic Association Presidential Address,...

Does Regulation Build Trust or Entrench Cliques? Lessons From Merchant Guilds and the Taxi Industry

Close-knit networks, like guilds and taxi associations, are helpful in enhancing trust and reliability. Yet they can also become exclusive and rent-seeking. Last May,...

The Role of Narratives in Economics

Narratives are vectors of ideas. Nobel laureate Robert Shiller suggests that in the age of social information networks, economists need to rethink how and...

Latest news

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.

US Taxpayers Should Not Be Subsidizing Harmful Big Oil Mergers

Chevron and ExxonMobil claim their announced mergers with Hess and Pioneer take advantage of market efficiencies, but a closer look reveals an antiquated tax provision likely sweetening these dangerous deals. Antitrust authorities must carefully review the serious risks entailed in these proposed mergers. In parallel, the United States federal government needs to end large tax-free reorganizations—the most egregious way in which American taxpayers are subsidizing monopolistic practices, writes Niko Lusiani.

Seeing Others

In an excerpt from her new book, Seeing Others, sociologist Michèle Lamont describes the impact of neoliberal ideas on the working class.

How Well Consumers Know Prices Matters for Tax Policy

The effectiveness of tax policy depends on whether sellers pass on changes in tax rates to consumers through changes in price. In new research, Felix Montag, Robin Mamrak, Alina Sagimuldina, and Monika Schnitzer investigate how this tax pass-through in turn depends on how much consumers know about prices. They show that if consumers are not aware of how prices for the same product vary between sellers, then they will be unaffected by tax changes intended to increase or decrease consumption.