Research

The “Turbulent Twenties” Are Just Beginning

Years ago, two academics predicted that an increase in economic inequality would lead to a period of political instability in 2020. Since...

Covid-19 Is Reducing Americans’ Confidence Across Institutions

Latest US household survey findings reveal that the Covid-19 crisis caused a sharp reduction in Americans’ confidence in institutions—whether or not they...

Defying Expectations, Bankruptcy Filings Are Down During the Covid-19 Crisis So Far

Historically, bankruptcy filings have closely tracked the business cycle and unemployment rates. However, a recent study found that this relationship has reversed...

Central Bankers Face Potential Conflict of Interest When Writing About QE Policies

As Quantitative Easing makes a return during the global Covid-19 pandemic, its effectiveness has once again come under intense debate in both...

Regulators Should Keep a Close Eye on the Little Guys in the Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine

As the race to find a Covid-19 vaccine or treatment rages on, many have raised concerns over trustworthiness of clinical research and...

Pursuing Stakeholder Capitalism Is an Impossible Task When Stakeholders Have Different Beliefs

Can companies really attempt to benefit all stakeholders, when stakeholders rarely agree on the best course of action? A new study examines...

The Illusory Promise of “Stakeholderism”: Why Embracing Stakeholder Governance Would Fail Stakeholders

Stakeholderism—granting corporate leaders discretion to give weight to the interest of all stakeholders—should not be expected to deliver its purported benefits to...

Competition in Digital Markets: What Have We Learned So Far?

A new Stigler Center working paper systematically analyzed and summarized 21 reports issued by 17 antitrust authorities and expert panels on the...

Social Distancing Laws Cause Only Small Losses of Economic Activity: Scandinavian Countries as a Case Study

A new study compares the economic performance of Sweden, which avoided a government-mandated shutdown and allowed businesses to operate freely during the...

When Big Tech Firms Buy Startups, Antitrust Enforcers Should Take Notice

A frequent argument made in favor of allowing Big Tech firms to acquire smaller firms is that permissive merger policy promotes innovative...

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.