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Special interest groups

Special interest groups: Groups with preferences that differ from the preferences of the median voter. There is nothing wrong with special interests forming groups per se; the trouble starts when they disproportionally sway policy in their favor. “...the great enemy of democracy is monopoly, in all its forms: gigantic corporations, trade associations and other agencies for price control, trade-union… Effectively organized functional groups possess tremendous power for exploiting the community at large and even sabotaging the system.” Henry Calvert Simons - A Positive Program for Laissez Faire (1934)

Money in Politics

How Do Members of Congress React to the Potential of Lucrative Private Sector Employment?

Benjamin C.K. Egerod
Many fear that the potential for well-paid post-elective jobs can make legislators give rewards to their future employers. A new study finds that career...
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Corporate Governance

Over 60 Leading Finance Economists Ask SEC to Revise the Shareholder Voting Draft Reform

ProMarket writers
The new regulation that Security and Exchange Commissioners voted in November doesn't fix proxy advisory industry duopoly problems, but it actually makes them worse:...
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Academic Capture

Purdue Circumvented the Regulator to Promote OxyContin, Hiding Its Real Risk of Addiction

David Egilman, Gregory Collins, Julie Falender, Naomi Shembo, Ciara Keegan, Sunil Tohan
In 2001, the Food and Drug Administration required Purdue to change OxyContin’s patient package inserts to make addiction risks more evident. The company altered...
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Academic Capture

OxyContin's Academic Marketing: The Studies That Fueled the Opioid Crisis

David Egilman, Gregory Collins, Julie Falender, Naomi Shembo, Ciara Keegan, Sunil Tohan
Purdue Pharmaceuticals used to cite three major studies to argue that in prescribing OxyContin, addiction-risk was not significant. The most influential of those studies...
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Academic Capture

The Uber Bubble: Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful?

Hubert Horan
In the first of three interrelated articles, transportation consultant Hubert Horan discusses Uber's "uncompetitive economics." There is no real innovation in the company's business...
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Antitrust and Competition

Why a New Digital Authority Is Necessary

Luigi Zingales, Fiona Scott Morton
A recent Washington Post op-ed claimed that creating a digital authority to regulate Big Tech would be a disaster because of high costs and the...
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Antitrust and Competition

How Economic Concentration and Crony Capitalism Led to the Chaos in Chile

Daniel Matamala
The signals of unrest in Chile mounted for years amid corruption scandals, rising inequality, and new monopolies. The fare increase on public transport that...
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Corporate Governance

The Problem With Unicorns: Why Investors Stopped WeWork From Going Public

Jeffrey Carter
More and more startups are valued at over $1 billion, even if they have dysfunctional corporate structures and hazardous business models. For tech companies,...
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ARCHIVE

Unusual Debate at Davos: Lobbying, Maximizing Shareholder Value and the Duty of CEO’s

ProMarket writers
BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink: “We can tell a company to fire 5000 employees tomorrow, or tell a company to do something that maybe is bad for...
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Antitrust and Competition

The NCAA Goes After College Athletes’ NIL Money—Here are the Antitrust Implications for Workers and Consumers

Ted Tatos
Having lost in the Supreme Court on student-athlete academic benefits, the NCAA has signaled a continuing attempt to suppress competition in the...
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Corporate Governance

Have Business Roundtable Companies Lived Up to Their Stakeholder Commitments?  

Lucian Bebchuk, Roberto Tallarita
In 2019, more than 100 CEOs of US public companies signed a Business Roundtable statement in which they pledged to deliver value...
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Inequality

Do Protests Matter At All for Shifting Government Policy Around Economic Redistribution?

Belinda Archibong
New research on the effectiveness of protests on government distributions provides insights into the political incentives of a country’s leadership and the...
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Antitrust and Competition

Mergers and Smoking Guns

Erik Peinert
A recently uncovered memo from George Stigler and Richard Posner reveals how they thought about antitrust and merger policy in advising the...
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Corporate Governance

Will “Portfolio Primacy” Throw a Monkey Wrench in Elon Musk’s Plans to Acquire Twitter?

Bernard Sharfman
The SEC's definition of fiduciary duty allows institutional shareholders to vote against Elon Musk's Twitter takeover bid thanks to portfolio primacy.
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Antitrust and Competition

How Europe Can Enforce the Digital Markets Act Effectively 

Alexandre de Streel, Fiona Scott Morton, Jacques Crémer, Amelia Fletcher, Paul Heidhues, Giorgio Monti, Rupprecht Podszun, Monika Schnitzer
As the European Commission gets ready to embark on the complicated task of implementing the recently agreed-upon Digital Market Act, which would...
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Corporate Governance

How Enlightened is Enlightened Shareholder Value?

Lucian Bebchuk, Kobi Kastiel, Roberto Tallarita
There has been growing support for replacing the traditional corporate purpose with so-called “enlightened shareholder value,” which would guide firms to consider...
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ProMarket is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket Policy.

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