Rent seeking

Voters Still Believe Politics is About the Common Good, Not Just Rent-Seeking

Do voters still believe that politics can be a source for common-good policies and not just partisan bickering and rent-seeking? With political...

Gabriel Zucman: “I’m a Bit Skeptical That Freezing the Assets of a Few Dozen Oligarchs Can Be Highly Effective”

60 percent of the wealth of Russia’s richest 0.01 percent are held offshore. UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman explains why blanket sanctions, of...

How the Covid-19 Pandemic Put Corporate Stakeholder Promises to the Test

Prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, corporate leaders pledged to look after all stakeholders, not just deliver value to shareholders. Did they...

Why Financial Regulations Might Fail to Produce Their Desired Outcome: The Case of the Capital Conservation Buffer

The capital conservation buffer (CCB) was created after the 2008 financial crisis, instructing banks to retain their dividends in an escrow account and...

How Much Can We Trust Index Funds on Climate Change?

According to a theory that is gaining support among academics and practitioners, we should expect index fund managers to undertake the role...

Big Tech, the FTC, and Ordoliberals: ProMarket’s Top Stories of 2021

As 2021 draws to a close, we look back at ProMarket’s most-read and most-widely shared stories of the past year.

The Best Political Economy Books of 2021

A scholarly examination of market’s power toll on American workers, the collected works of a pioneering economic thinker, an ambitious narrative of...

This Proposal Could Inadvertently Improve Corporate Accounting

A provision within the Biden administration’s Build Back Better bill that assesses a minimum tax on certain companies based on their income...

Dislocation, Dislocation, Dislocation: Covid, the Retail Crisis, and REITs

In an excerpt from his new book Retail Recovery, retail expert and author Mark Pilkington explores the impact of the sector's decline...

Addressing Climate Change Must Begin with Verifiable Carbon Accounting

Robert Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna propose a new approach for verifiable accounting on indirect corporate emissions that would apply to all corporations,...

Latest news

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.

Debating the Draft Merger Guidelines: Transcript

On September 7, the Stigler Center hosted a webinar to discuss the draft merger guidelines. What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the event.