News

In new research, Giovanna Invernizzi and Federico Trombetta build a model that shows how factional disagreement from a national leader’s own party can reveal to voters the leader’s strength and deter them from enacting harmful reforms.

Colombia is one of 52 countries that have enshrined competition protections in their constitution. The Constitutional Court’s 2026 ruling in Superintendence of Industry and Commerce v. National Civil Registry explored how countries may resolve clashing constitutional principles, in this case the state’s protection of competition and the separation of powers, write Maciej Bernatt, Angel Madiedo, Hannya Ramírez Madrid.

In new research, Wolfgang Kerber argues that the European Union's decision to require a third option in Meta's "consent or pay" model focuses too heavily on user consent and ignores the broader goal in the Digital Markets Act of reducing gatekeeper advantages and increasing competition.

The Stigler Center is seeking pre-tenure candidates for its Affiliate Fellows program. Applications are due January 22. You can apply here.

In new research, Patrice Bougette, Frédéric Marty, and Simone Vannuccini propose that competition authorities add a conditional fine to antitrust cases that is activated when behavioral remedies are no longer effective.

The following is an excerpt from Seeing Like a Supply Chain by Miriam Posner, now out at Yale University Press.

As banks grow, tiered regulation places them in stricter categories to address their greater risks. In new research, Pedro M. Batista finds that transition periods between tiers might delay when some higher standards become mandatory, potentially leaving growing banks exposed while known risks remain unresolved, as happened with Silicon Valley Bank. Federal Reserve reforms should address this gap between growing risks and delayed safeguards.

Matt Lucky reviews Mariana Mazzucato’s new book The Common Good Economy: A new compass, now out at Basic Venture Group.

Prizewinning research in most science-related academic fields has become less concentrated among institutions. However, as Richard B. Freeman, Danxia Xie, Hanzhe Zhang, and Hanzhang Zhou discuss in new research, prizewinners in economics continue to come from a narrow set of American institutions.  

For decades antitrust agencies, courts, and scholars have debated whether Section 7 of the Clayton Act permits an efficiency defense, in which merging firms can argue that enhanced efficiencies from the merger show that it does not reduce competition. However, the Supreme Court’s recent establishment of the “major questions doctrine,” which enforces or re-enforces a textualist reading of regulatory statues, undermines proponents of the efficiency defense, because the Clayton Act does not clearly and explicitly contain an efficiency defense. The “major questions doctrine” essentially acts as textualism on steroids,” writes Robert H. Lande.