Research

In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.

An exit-inducing vertical merger might reduce welfare even if it is a welfare-enhancing vertical merger absent exit. Therefore, the possibility for rivals’ exit should be incorporated into the guidelines for vertical merger evaluation, write Javier D. Donna and Pedro Pereira in new research.

A decade of evidence suggests that Open Internet policies have delivered the opposite effect.

In their research, published in History of Economic Ideas, Thierry Kirat and Frédéric Marty stress the importance of the late 1930s in the making of antitrust. The moment was exceptional for its consensus within the economic discipline and the implementation of voluntarist public enforcement, particularly under Thurman Arnold according to the prescriptions of the Second Chicago School, institutionalists, and the preferences of the Neo-Brandeis movement.

In a field experiment conducted with economists on Twitter, the authors find that users who are identifiable as white, women, and PhD students affiliated with “top-ten” universities are more likely to receive follow-backs.

In new research, David Audretsch, Christian Fisch, Chiara Franzoni, Paul P. Momtaz, and Silvio Vismara find that the decline of academic freedom over the last decade has had a deleterious impact on innovation, as measured by the quantity and quality of new patents.

Dominant web services will often incentivize mobile phone carriers to provide their customers access to their services at zero cost to the customer’s data plan, also known as zero-rating. In new research, Bruno Renzetti argues that this behavior can be a form of exclusionary conduct designed to solidify the monopolies of dominant online platforms and services that ultimately harms consumers even if it appears to lower their data costs at first glance.

Todd Gormley and Manish Jha find that institutional investors holding bonds may experience greater investor attention and more active shareholding voting on their equity positions.

Study participants are less likely to accept lower returns in support of social goals when acting as investors versus consumers or donors with a third accepting no reduction in returns. Additionally, those with higher income, women and Democrats were willing to accept lower return in support of social goals than those with lower income, men, Republicans and Independents.

In new research, Marco Grotteria, Max Miller, and S Lakshmi Naaraayanan create and analyze a dataset of more than 12,000 FARA filings to investigate the drivers and outcomes of foreign lobbying of U.S. legislators. Their findings can help inform new laws and regulations that improve government transparency and prevent the more nefarious effects of foreign lobbying.