William E. Kovacic
William Kovacic is the Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy at the George Washington University Law School. He is a Non-executive Director of the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority. From 2001 to 2004, he was the General Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission, in which served as a commissioner from 2006 to 2011 and chaired from March 2008 to March 2009.
Antitrust and Competition
Show Your Work: Meaningful Disclosure and Antitrust Enforcement Goals
The Stigler Center’s 2023 Antitrust and Competition conference seeks to answer the question: what lays beyond the consumer welfare standard? In advance of the...
Antitrust and Competition
The Roots of America’s Competition Revolution
Proponents of the current transformation in America’s competition policy managed to shape legislative reform proposals, push public antitrust agencies to boost enforcement, and successfully...
Antitrust and Competition
Two Views of Exclusion: Why the European Union and the United States Diverged on Google
What accounts for the difference in contemporary EU and US antitrust doctrine? Examined closely, says William E. Kovacic in Chapter 4 of our forthcoming...
Latest news
Income Inequality
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.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Research
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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. Â
Book Excerpts
After Neoliberalism
The following is an excerpt from Martin Daunton's new book, "The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023," out November 14.
