The Role of the State

Diana Moss reviews four recent examples of the Trump administration weaponizing antitrust and regulation to stifle opposing ideological and political viewpoints.

As private corporations gain unprecedented control over public data, Americans are losing access to the information that underpins democracy and critical aspects of their lives. D. Victoria Baranetsky argues that this rise of secrecy—driven by the rising value of data and government privatization—demands not just transparency, but a bold commitment to anti-secrecy as essential to democratic governance.

It is an economic truism that markets operate more efficiently and fairly when there is more transparency. However, in the case of sovereign debt markets, the virtues of transparency are partially offset by its costs, writes Mark Weidemaier. Without an international regulator or bankruptcy court, opacity sometimes advances the public interest, including by helping financially distressed governments protect assets.

In new research, Benjamin Wood, Sven Gallasch, Nicholas Shaxson, Katherine Sievert, and Gary Sacks write that competition underenforcement and a narrow regulatory focus on prices and output has allowed industries that produce harmful consumer products, such as tobacco or ultra-processed foods, to increase demand and, consequentially, harm to society. They argue that competition law must evolve to consider health impacts.

The abundance movement, which seeks to lift the burden of inefficient regulation off the private sector to unleash equitable growth, has become the policy platform for many liberals. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis argues that the movement fails to account for the costs of externalities that many of the regulations it derides seek to address.

Gary Kalman writes that actions under the second Trump administration to dismantle recent anti-corruption initiatives, including those pioneered during the first Trump administration, will cost dearly the American and global economy and enable many of the nefarious actors President Trump has publicly admonished.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York reflects on the history of cryptocurrency and his experience adjudicating criminal cases involving it.

The following is an excerpt from "Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America" by Peter Conti-Brown and Sean H. Vanatta, now out at Princeton University Press. 

Stigler Center Assistant Director Matt Lucky reviews Kenneth Rogoff’s new book, Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead, which reflects on the rise and ongoing fall of the American dollar’s global dominance. Rogoff discusses his book with Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales on this week’s Capitalisn’t episode, which you can listen to here.

Anat R. Admati reviews Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (2024) by Melissa B. Jacoby.