Money in Politics

How to Defeat Populist Plutocrats? “Build a Counter-Narrative”

Beppe Severgnini, one of the most influential journalists in Italy, talks to ProMarket about what the U.S. can learn from Italy on how to defeat...

Can “Productive Tensions” Save American Democracy Again?

This is the first installment of a two-part interview we had with David Moss about his recently published book Democracy: A Case Study, which contains...

Raghuram Rajan: Populist Nationalism Is “the First Step Toward Crony Capitalism”

The former governor of the Reserve Bank of India discussed the “concentrated and devastating” impact that technology and trade had on blue-collar communities, the anger...

The Berlusconi Voter, Taken Seriously: a Little Exercise in Historical Comprehension

The Berlusconi phenomenon in Italy both anticipated and exhibits features that epitomize the plight of Western politics.     This is the third installment of ProMarket’s new article...

The Big Picture: Clientelism, Plutocracy, and Democratization

Why is the electoral process not enough to rid nations of pathological political distortions such as cronyism and corruption?   This is the second installment of ProMarket’s...

Populist Plutocrats as a Political Phenomenon

How can a rich man successfully pose as a representative of the poor and the disenfranchised and become the leader of a populist movement?...

Stigler Center Event: Is Direct Democracy a Solution to Populism?

Can direct democracy be used to fix the crisis of representative democracy? Join us for a series of three stand-alone, interrelated lunch seminars by...

How Many Newt Gingrich's Are There in Washington? Much More Than You Might Think

As more and more lobbyists move to consulting and PR agencies, experts say the underworld of hidden lobbying is probably much bigger than what formal...

Watch: Richard Posner Says Congresspeople Are “Slaves to the Donors”

A clip of Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago discussing the effects of the Supreme...

Stigler Center Lecture: Is American Democracy in Trouble?

David Moss, the Paul Whiton Cherington Professor at Harvard Business School, will examine the health of American democracy from a historical perspective. Fears about extreme...

Latest news

Creation over Time in Copyright and Patent

On May 18, the United States Supreme Court decided two intellectual property cases with two seemingly different results. A closer look, however, reveals a complimentary concern with the monopolistic power of first movers and how the legal system should enable innovation from second movers over time, writes Randy Picker.

ESG Standards’ Good, Bad and Ugly

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted a virtual event discussing the standards, metrics and disclosures of investments focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. The following is a transcript of the event.

Reregulate.

Lee Hepner and William J. McGee respond to Clifford Winston’s ProMarket piece asserting that further deregulation of the airline industry would resolve problems in the industry. Instead, the authors claim a return to regulation would produce better results for travelers.

A World With Far Fewer Mergers

Brooke Fox and Walter Frick analyze research and ideas presented at the Stigler Center Antitrust and Competition Conference that question the value of mergers.

The Banking Risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies

The implementation of central bank digital currencies as the primary medium of exchange would exacerbate the flaws of our current fiat system which encourage banks to overextend credit and create liabilities that they cannot redeem. This will worsen the already recurring cycles of financial crises, writes Vibhu Vikramaditya.

The Whig History of the Merger Guidelines

A pervasive "Whig" view of United States antitrust history among scholars and practitioners celebrates the Merger Guidelines' implementation of increasingly sophisticated economic methods since their...

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.