In February, the Federal Trade Commission settled with pharmaceutical benefits manager (PBM) Express Scripts. The FTC had sued Express Scripts and two other large PBMs under the long dormant Section 5 of the FTC Act, which targets “unfair methods of competition.” The settlement suggests that the FTC may succeed in addressing the convoluted contracts between PBMs, drug manufacturers, health insurers, and employers that drive up drug prices for Americans. It also opens unchartered territory for antitrust enforcement and the limits of Section 5, argue Fiona Scott Morton and Mariah Smith.

In new research, Renuka Diwan, Paul Eliason, Riley League, Ryan C. McDevitt, James W. Roberts, and Jetson Leder-Luis investigate how Medicare’s shift to a competitive bidding system to reduce prices has inadvertently shifted market share to fraudulent suppliers.

Antitrust authorities increasingly assess mergers through the lens of innovation, particularly in research-intensive sectors such as pharmaceuticals. In new research, Carmine Ornaghi and Lorenzo Cassi show how mergers disrupt human capital and reduce innovation in what they call manslaughter acquisitions.

In new research, Martin Schmalz and Jin Xie examine how shareholder preferences influence the United States pharmaceutical industry. They find that generic-drug manufacturers sometimes harm their firms’ own value when doing so benefits shareholder portfolios, who frequently have stakes in competing brand-name firms.

In a new working paper, Magnus Lodefalk, Lydia Löthman, Michael Koch, and Erik Engberg examine how generative AI is reshaping the labor market. They find little evidence that AI has cut the total number of jobs, but show that it has slowed hiring for the youngest workers, especially in the AI-exposed occupations where young women are concentrated. Over time, AI’s effect on entry-level roles risks thinning the next generation’s ability to build the skills and networks that careers are made of. 

2026 marks the fiftieth anniversary of University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Michael D Bordo reflects on how Milton Friedman’s legacy has developed in this time. While Friedman’s revolutionary idea of monetarism has been superseded in some ways, his contributions have played a key role in the evolution of monetary policy and remain critical to contemporary macroeconomic research and central bank policy.

The European Union’s draft Merger Guidelines assign multiple meanings to several key terms, making competition enforcement less predictable. Anouk van der Veer, Max van Iersel, and Giorgio Monti explore the Guideline’s inconsistent use of three of these terms: competitiveness, dynamic, and capabilities.

The European Union’s draft Merger Guidelines consider import competition from foreign rivals to be a powerful competitive constraint on domestic producers, thus easing clearance for mergers between those domestic competitors. This stipulation ignores how a merger between domestic rivals can lead to subsequent trade barriers, writes Felix Montag.