Culture & Society

Police Reform

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of white police officers in Minneapolis and the ensuing global outrage, an unprecedented focus on the causes of police violence and misconduct has emerged. Should the police be “defunded,” as many protesters demand, or should US law enforcement reformed in other ways? ProMarket investigates.

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.

Mathematical Flaws in Ranked Choice Voting Are Rare but Real

A political movement in the U.S. is encouraging municipalities and states to adopt ranked choice voting as a supposedly more representative voting...

Repeat Voting: A Simple Way To Get More Representative Results

Democratic elections suffer from several shortcomings, including low voter turnout and the effects of inaccurate polling. Sergiu Hart suggests adopting a simple...

Different Voting Methods Produce Different—and More Accurate—Results

There is a significant ongoing debate in the United States on the merits of plurality voting (how most American elections are conducted)...

Corporate Political Responsibility in a Captured Economy

Most attention on corporate governance has focused on businesses’ social responsibility. Claudine Schneider and Ed Dolan write that businesses need to take...

The Historical Cost of Populism

Most work on populism has investigated the reasons why voters choose populist leaders and governments. In new research, Moritz Schularick,  Christoph Trebesch,...

How the Start-Up Nation Could Fail

Lucian Bebchuk and Oliver Hart explain why Israel’s proposed legal transformation would undermine not only its democracy but also its economy.

What Are The Media For?

In response to ProMarket's debate about the Twitter Files and the roles of social media and traditional media, Surya Gowda argues that...

Climate Change Is Shifting Voter Behavior in Low-Income Countries

Farmers in low-income countries have multiple channels through which they respond to climate change. Some switch to growing more heat-resilient crops or...

Elections Hinder Companies’ Access to Credit

A large body of literature has produced uncertain conclusions about how elections affect firms’ access to credit. In a wide-ranging analysis of...

Latest news

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.