News

The following is an adapted excerpt from “Monopoly Politics: Competition and Learning in the Evolution of Policy Regimes” by Erik Peinert, now out at Oxford University Press. 

South Korea’s proposed Online Platform Regulation Act has taken multiple turns amid political upheaval, pressure from the United States, and a fiercely competitive domestic tech market. Hwang Lee explores how global geopolitics, strong domestic platforms, and the "Brussels Effect" are reshaping the country’s approach to digital regulation.

Corporations can sidestep prosecution by cooperating with the government and offering up employees to avoid their own criminal liability. Ellen S. Podgor discusses two prominent reasons why the current approach to corporate criminality is inefficient.

In new research, Bruno Pellegrino and Damien Capelle find that while global capital markets have grown dramatically over the past five decades and reached new jurisdictions, the uneven pace of financial liberalization has failed to reallocate capital to lower-income countries, reduced world GDP by 5.9%, and increased inequality between rich and poor countries.

ProMarket interviews Magali Eben and Giorgio Monti about changes to the disclosure policy of the The Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA) and the broader conversation on conflicts of interest in antitrust and competition scholarship.

Herbert Hovenkamp reviews Epic Games’ lawsuits against Apple and Google for restraining users’ ability to access Epic’s offerings through third-party app stores. A comparison of the two ecosystems sheds light on what remedies would improve benefits to consumers and how the Department of Justice’s own lawsuit against Apple may fare.

Diana Moss reviews four recent examples of the Trump administration weaponizing antitrust and regulation to stifle opposing ideological and political viewpoints.

Stigler Center Assistant Director Matt Lucky reviews Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan’s recent book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing). The book presents an optimistic vision for the educational and pedagogical role of AI-assisted chatbots as personal tutors and teaching assistants. Khan discusses his book with Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales on this week’s Capitalisn’t episode, which you can listen to here.

It is an economic truism that markets operate more efficiently and fairly when there is more transparency. However, in the case of sovereign debt markets, the virtues of transparency are partially offset by its costs, writes Mark Weidemaier. Without an international regulator or bankruptcy court, opacity sometimes advances the public interest, including by helping financially distressed governments protect assets.

Member of the European Parliament Alexandra Geese writes that illiberal politicians and Big Tech social media platforms have abused the principle of freedom of speech to suppress ideas with which they do not agree and promote hate speech. She provides three recommendations for retaking speech from the social media platforms that constitute today’s public sphere.