News

An outlet for insiders to speak freely (as they remain anonymous to the reader) on what they perceive as problematic practices in their own industry – with an emphasis on how the industry tweaks the rules of the game and captures regulation. "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.” Adam Smith - An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

Event Notes

Interviews

Letters to the Editor

Reading List

Reading List Parent

Research

Series

Stigler Center News

Regulation

Reducing Corporate Fines Often Penalizes Rather Than Protects the Public

Nathan Atkinson

Government regulators may reduce corporate fines for criminal behavior if the fines threaten the firm’s survival, thus posing harms to employees and society. In a recent paper, Nathan Atkinson explores the frequency with which government regulators reduce fines and evaluates if these reductions are justified or if regulators are undermining their own capabilities to deter bad behavior and fully compensate harmed parties.

Antitrust and Competition

The Shared Roots of (Neo-)Brandeisianism and Ordoliberalism Suggest How To Regulate Big Tech

Manuel Wörsdörfer

In new research, Manuel Wörsdörfer compares the philosophies of two formative antitrust thinkers writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States and Europe: Louis D. Brandeis and Walter Eucken. A discussion of their body of thought highlights the antitrust concerns of the time and how their positions can be adapted to today’s regulatory environment, particularly regarding Big Tech.

Commentary

Claudia Goldin: A Master at Breaking New Ground In Economics by Unearthing Unusual Data

Cecilia Rouse

Cecilia Rouse, a colleague and former student of Claudia Goldin, explains Goldin’s perseverance in unearthing datasets that allowed her to document trends in labor and education, particularly with respect to women. Rouse also praises Goldin’s courage to prioritize the study of women and discusses what it was like to work with the recent Nobel Prize- winning economist on seminal work.

Culture & Society

Is The Decline In Marriage Causing Less Happiness?

Brooke Fox

And why happiness research matters for economics. An interview with Sam Peltzman.

Antitrust and Competition

The Draft Merger Guidelines Risk Reducing Innovation

Ginger Zhe Jin, Mario Leccese, Liad Wagman

The draft Merger Guidelines seek to reduce mergers and acquisitions, especially those that remove potential entrants. However, precluding acquisitions in those settings ignores both what incentivizes startups and investors to take initial risks, as well as the advantages that large incumbents have to parlay acquisitions into further innovation and an array of widely commercialized consumer products. The overall effect may dampen innovation, write Ginger Zhe Jin, Mario Leccese, and Liad Wagman.

Antitrust and Competition

Big Tech Calls for Agency Heads To Recuse Are a Groundless and Cynical Strategy To Obstruct Enforcement

Laurence H. Tribe

Big Tech’s efforts to push Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter to recuse themselves from participating in lawsuits against the companies due to prior work have no legal basis and are naked efforts to weaken agency enforcement, writes Laurence Tribe.

Antitrust and Competition

How the FTC Could Have Used Its Draft Merger Guidelines To Argue Against Microsoft-Activision and Meta-Within

Joshua Gray, Cristian Santesteban

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban show how the Federal Trade Commission could have used its 2023 draft Merger Guidelines to focus its challenges against Microsoft-Activision and Meta-Within squarely on the pressing economic concern of protecting competition during critical technological transitions making full use of the law’s traditional incipiency standard.

Commentary

Why Claudia Goldin Won the Nobel

Marianne Bertrand

Marianne Bertrand describes the contributions of Claudia Goldin, this year's Nobel prize winner in economics, as well as her relationship with Goldin as a colleague.

Regulation

Measuring the Cost of Red Tape

Bruno Pellegrino, Geoff Zheng

Bruno Pellegrino and Geoff Zheng explain how their novel methodology combining survey data and economic modeling can be used to quantify major questions, such as the economic loss from government regulation. This loss, they find, amounts to $154 billion in seven European countries each year.

Development

The Market for Markets Is Captured

Jac C. Heckelman, Bonnie Wilson

George Stigler posited that economic regulation is best understood as a product created via a market process. In the market for regulation, different participants—such as politicians, firms, and voters—buy and sell the rules of the game to serve their individual interests. In new research, Jac Heckelman and Bonnie Wilson use Stigler’s theory of economic regulation and special interest capture to study why foreign aid to developing countries that is tied to market reform has not successfully accomplished its goals.

1...345...368 Page 4 of 368

Latest news

Antitrust and Competition

Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists

Tim Wu

Former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy Tim Wu responds to the November 27 letter signed by former chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Antitrust Division calling for a separation of the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines.

Book Reviews

Can the Public Moderate Social Media?

Surya Gowda

ProMarket student editor Surya Gowda reviews the arguments made by Paul Gowder in his new book, The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.

Income Inequality

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

Valentino Larcinese, Alberto Parmigiani

In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.

ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm

Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?

Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Alex Lee

Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.

Antitrust and Competition

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition

Claire Kelloway

Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.

Research

Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation

Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, Richard Townsend

Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.

Antitrust and Competition

Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines

Letter to the Editor

Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.

View All

News

Book Excerpts

Book Reviews

Commentary

Event Notes

Interviews

Letters to the Editor

Reading List

Research

Series

Stigler Center News

Latest news

Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists

Can the Public Moderate Social Media?

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition

Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation

Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines

About Us

Categories