Media

How Big Tech Uses Net Neutrality To Subvert Competition

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

How Financial Experts Convince You That They’re the Experts

In The Spectacle of Expertise: Why Financial Analysts Perform in the Media, Alex Preda explores how financial analysts produce their advice and...

What Are The Media For?

In response to ProMarket's debate about the Twitter Files and the roles of social media and traditional media, Surya Gowda argues that...

The Wicked Problem Embodied by The Twitter Files

In response to a recent ProMarket post about the Twitter Files, professor Tom Ginsburg points out that the toughest question lies in...

Kyiv Independent Editor-in-Chief: “Leaving Ukraine is the Last Thing I Would Want To Do”

The editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent speaks with FT journalist Edward Luce in an exclusive video interview covering the challenges of her...

Chart of the Week: Most News in Russia is Government-Owned or Influenced

Of 3.9 million Russian news articles studied, 77 percent were from either a government-owned or government-influenced outlet.

How Big Media Handed Digital Advertising to Big Tech

The current structure of digital advertising markets makes the Google-Facebook duopoly an unavoidable trading partner for every party in the content consumption...

Announcing the Participants in the Spring 2022 Stigler Center Journalists in Residence Program

Next month, the Stigler Center will welcome eight world-class journalists from Nigeria, Brazil, Chile, Italy, India, Canada, and the United States for...

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...

The Present and Future of Journalism: How the News Media Lost Its Purpose

At a time of information overabundance, journalism has lost its purpose. Newspapers, traditionally the keepers of journalistic flame, are going away. What...

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.