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

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.