William K. Black
William K. Black is an Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former senior financial regulator. He is a white-collar criminologist. He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. He was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. He is the author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One (University of Texas Press 2005). Black developed the concept “control fraud” – frauds in which the leader uses the entity as a “weapon.” Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined and kill and maim thousands. He helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives, served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae’s CEO, assisted Icelandic and French leaders responding to their financial crises, and addressed members of the UN General Assembly on policies needed to reduce the risk of future financial crises. Black has testified before Congress five times about the financial crisis.
Regulatory Capture
Regulatory Capture is Not “Inevitable”
“Capture” has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of economists who turn their students into sure-to-fail regulators.
A Wall Street Journal editorial asserted the “inevitability” of...
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Book Excerpts
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Democracy
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
The Impact of Algorithms on Competition and Competition Law
Antonio Capobianco, the deputy head of the OECD Competition Division and one of the authors of the 2023 OECD report on algorithmic competition and collusion, explains the risks that algorithms and artificial intelligence pose to competition and how regulators can approach the changing competition paradigm.
Antitrust and Competition
Rivals’ Exit Should Be Incorporated into the Guidelines for Vertical Merger Evaluation
An exit-inducing vertical merger might reduce welfare even if it is a welfare-enhancing vertical merger absent exit. Therefore, the possibility for rivals’ exit should be incorporated into the guidelines for vertical merger evaluation, write Javier D. Donna and Pedro Pereira in new research.
Book Excerpts
The Business of Colonialism
In his new book, Empire Incorporated, Philip Stern argues that corporations drove the global expansion of the British Empire rather than provide...
