Samantha Eyler-Driscoll

Samantha Eyler-Driscoll (MSc Comparative Politics, London School of Economics, 2009) is the former Managing Editor of ProMarket. She specializes in Latin American politics, the relationship between states and markets, and the gender dimensions of political economy. Since 2010 she has edited for business and academic publications in the United Kingdom, Colombia, and internationally. Her political analysis and narrative nonfiction have appeared in Foreign Affairs, New Statesman, New Internationalist, Washington Post, NACLA, Huffington Post, Economy, Arcadia, and elsewhere.

Does Direct Democracy Reduce Regulatory Capture?

Does direct democracy make regulatory capture harder for industry? Samantha Eyler-Driscoll looks at a new Stigler Center working paper that examines state-level referenda and...

Gabriel Zucman: “Some People in Economics Feel That Talking About Inequality Is Not What Economists Should Be Doing"

The rising scholar of taxation and inequality talks to ProMarket about the problems excessive economic power poses for open political systems, how states can...

ProMarket Is Live at the 2nd Annual Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference: Digital Platforms and Concentration

Check out the live coverage by the ProMarket team of the invitation-only 2018 Antitrust and Competition: Digital Platforms and Concentration conference, hosted by Chicago...

Baldwin on Globalization: “A Lot of the Narrative Is Based on the US as If It Were the Whole World”

Richard Baldwin, professor of international trade at the Graduate Institute of Geneva and editor-in-chief of VoxEU.org, talks to ProMarket about the convergence between the...

What Glue Holds Communist Capitalism Together in China? Cronyism

With a few cronyist tweaks, China’s communist leaders made capitalism safe for Party rule. But will cronyism become China’s next booming export? The Chinese economy...

Does the Growth of Bitcoin Have Anything to Do with Distrust of Government?

The results of the latest Financial Trust Index (FTI) survey, released last week by Chicago Booth and the Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, offer...

10th Year of Chicago Booth/Kellogg School’s Financial Trust Index Shows an Uptick of Public Faith in Markets

A decade after the financial crisis, average faith in market institutions is recovering—especially among high-income individuals and Republicans—while trust in government is on a...

The Other World Bank Scandal: A New Study Documents How Corporate Collusion Hurts the Bank’s Credibility—and Harms Sustainable Development

While the World Bank scrambles to contain the Doing Business rankings firestorm, a new paper by Rabia Malik and Randall Stone traces a more...

In Capitalisn’t Pilot, Zingales and Waldock Fret at Prospect of a Monopolist-in-Chief

In the inaugural episode of the new podcast from the Stigler Center and Chicago Booth Review, economists Kate Waldock and Luigi Zingales probe the...

Tyler Cowen: Complacent Americans Can’t Imagine a Future Unlike the Present

In conversation with Stigler Center director Luigi Zingales, Tyler Cowen—one of the brains behind the world’s most popular economics blog, Marginal Revolution—argues that a...

Latest news

Revising Guideline 6 With Evidence To Establish a Structural Inference for Input Foreclosure

Vertical merger law lacks the structural presumption of horizontal merger law, which shifts the burden from the government to the merging parties to provide evidence that a merger will not produce anticompetitive effects when it is known that the merger will substantially increase market concentration. To improve Guideline 6 of the draft Merger Guidelines concerning vertical foreclosure, Steven Salop develops a three-factor criteria with which the government antitrust agencies can show an analogous structural “inference” that shifts the burden of evidence to the merging parties.

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.