Covid-19

Event Notes: How Will China Move on from the Covid-19 Pandemic?

Countries around the world have overseen wide-ranging public health responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. On June 10, the Stigler Center hosted a...

Researchers Find Reduced Competition After Pandemic

The chart of the week comes from a new research paper that documents the increase in small business closures during the Covid...

How the Covid-19 Pandemic Put Corporate Stakeholder Promises to the Test

Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, corporate leaders pledged to look after all stakeholders, not just deliver value to shareholders. Did they...

Study: the Covid-19 Eviction Moratoriums Helped Reduce Food Insecurity and Mental Stress

A new study investigates the impact of 2020 Covid-19 rental eviction moratoria on the wellbeing of US households, finding that eviction moratoria...

Governments Were Forced to Restrict Civil Liberties to Deal With Covid-19. More Flexible Constitutions Could Prevent That From Becoming the New Normal

A new paper argues that exploitation of gaps within democratic constitutions during emergencies, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, has the potential to...

Challenges to Sound Global Governance for Health

In an excerpt from his new book, Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future, Lawrence O. Gostin examines the challenges and...

The Digital Divide During Epidemics: Who Benefits From New Financial Technologies?

A new paper finds that exposure to an epidemic in the current year significantly increases the likelihood that an individual completes financial...

How Twitter Weakened India’s Information Ecosystem

India’s Covid-19 crisis is a reminder that Indian democracy is also in a crisis, partly due to an information ecosystem where facts...

Female Academics Are Disproportionately Affected By Covid-19 Disruptions In Childcare

A new paper finds that academics who are parents to young children, and especially mothers, have lost a significant amount of research...

The Unequal Toll of Covid-19

A pandemic is by definition universal but while it is true that the Covid-19 outbreak has affected everyone, it has not done...

Latest news

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.

Debating the Draft Merger Guidelines: Transcript

On September 7, the Stigler Center hosted a webinar to discuss the draft merger guidelines. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the event.