Rent seeking

Do People Think Finance Benefits Society?

A new paper seeks to measure popular sentiment toward finance based on mentions of “finance” in millions of books, spanning eight languages...

Prison Labor Can Create Perverse Incentives for Incarceration and Reduce Trust in Legal Institutions

Government proponents of prison labor should be mindful of the potential for negative effects, including increased incarceration rates and citizens’ deteriorating views...

A New Stigler Center Case Study Explores the Link Between Italy’s Morandi Bridge Disaster and Crony Capitalism

Two years ago, the Morandi bridge collapse claimed 43 lives. Based on financial statements, Italian government documents, and interviews with independent experts...

Much of Antitrust Law Today Is Based on Unsupported or Demonstrably False Economic Theories. Will Economists Take Heed?

Many of the economic assumptions of contemporary antitrust law are unsupported or false, as the executive branch and judiciary have remade the...

The Coronavirus Crisis Has Exposed Private Equity’s Unsustainable Business Model

Private equity portfolio companies are heavily indebted, and they aren’t generating enough cash to service debts. The steady increase in asset values...

Inequality Has Increased Far Less Than You Think (If You Consider Social Security Benefits)

In the United States, Social Security accounts for nearly 60 percent of the total wealth of the bottom 90 percent. Once Social Security is...

The Cantillon Effect: Why Wall Street Gets a Bailout and You Don’t

According to the 18th-century French banker and philosopher Richard Cantillon, who benefits when the state prints money is based on its institutional setup. In...

The Populist Right Has a Plan to Take Power Away From Financiers and Challenge China

The nationalist rhetoric of the Trump administration can obscure a more sophisticated recognition by some people in the populist world that the core dynamic...

Zoom, Netflix, Slack: Amazon Is Behind All the Services We Use to Work From Home (and That’s a Problem)

The new normal for millions of people represents a near-total dependence on Amazon’s cloud-computing operation, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and places a substantial portion...

MBA Students Against Corporate America: “Stop Lobbying the White House on the Defense Production Act”

Since the virus outbreak, the US Chamber of Commerce has lobbied the federal government to limit the use of a piece of legislation that...

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How Many Banks Are at Risk of Insolvency Right Now?

Given the recent banking turmoil and failure of SVB and Signature and issues in First Republic, it is important to understand the...

The Challenges of Regulating Disinformation

In response to rising concerns about political disinformation, governments have introduced a slew of interventions. Federico Vaccari warns in new research that...

India’s Evolving Industrial Policy Is Critical for Realizing Its Development Vision

Industrial policy was once so out of fashion that it was jokingly called “the policy that shall not be named.” Now it’s...

Can Twitter Be a Force for Good? Social Media Helps Curb Corporate Misconduct

Collective shaming on social media is crucial in reducing corporate misbehavior — and society would be significantly worse off without watchdog platforms.

The Historical Cost of Populism

Most work on populism has investigated the reasons why voters choose populist leaders and governments. In new research, Moritz Schularick,  Christoph Trebesch,...

Globalization’s Uneven Impact on Women’s Occupational Attainment

The literature on globalization’s impact on women’s workforce participation generally takes a positive outlook but still produces mixed results. In their research,...

Nobel Laureate Douglas Diamond on How the Fed Could Have Prevented SVB’s Collapse

Nobel Laureate and bank run expert Douglas Diamond argues that the Fed’s choice to signal long-term low interest rates, and then suddenly...