Police Reform

How Financial Contracting Could Help the Police Force Manage Its Aims More Effectively

Hamid Mehran proposes funded deferred pay, an incentive structure to mitigate the risk and costs of police misconduct.

“Drive and Wave”: In Response to 1998 Police Reform, LAPD Officers Disengaged from Policing

A new paper documents how LAPD officers responded to two police reforms—one in 1998 and one in late 2002. It finds that...

Police Stops of Black Drivers Increase Following Trump Rallies, New Study Suggests 

A new study looks into how Trump's 2016 presidential campaign affected police behavior toward Black Americans and finds that the probability that...

Prison Labor Can Create Perverse Incentives for Incarceration and Reduce Trust in Legal Institutions

Government proponents of prison labor should be mindful of the potential for negative effects, including increased incarceration rates and citizens’ deteriorating views...

Few Bad Apples? New Study Finds That 40 Percent of Officers in a Large Police Force Are Discriminatory

A new paper seeks to examine whether police misbehavior is concentrated or diffuse by identifying whether highway patrol officers in Florida are...

What is the Connection Between Collective Bargaining and Police Officer Misconduct? Evidence from Florida

A working paper finds that after sheriffs’ deputies in Florida were allowed to unionize, violent incidents increased by 40 percent.

Should We Defund the Police? A New Capitalisn’t Reading List

In this episode of the Capitalisn't podcast, Kate and Luigi take an economist's look at the concept of defunding the police.

How to Get Police Reform Done? Use Direct Democracy

Instead of just imploring their representatives to fix things, Americans can use the tools of direct democracy to take charge and promote...

Break Up the Police

In most cities in America, it is not the police that answers to the mayors, but the mayors to the police. The...

Latest news

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.

Holding Up the News

Meta has silenced news organizations’ social media accounts in response to Canada’s Online News Act, a law not yet in effect. Josh Braun describes the reasoning behind such legislation, its potential flaws, and how Meta, particularly Facebook, has turned the Canadian wildfire crisis into a regulatory pressure campaign.