Aaron Director

Corporations and the Rise of the Chicago Law and Economics Movement

From its birth in 1946 onward, corporations made possible and crucially supported the rise of the Chicago law and economics movement. Aaron Director,...

Aaron Director and the Empirical Foundation for the Chicago Attitude on Antitrust

Empirical evidence, not just disembodied theory, was an important building block of Director’s view that competition could defeat concentration, writes Daniel Kuehn. Editor's note: Aaron...

A Fair Amount of Freedom for Everyone: Aaron Director Did Have Ideals

David Henderson of the Hoover Institution defends the legacy of Aaron Director, the most enigmatic among the founders of the so-called "Chicago School." Director, argues...

How Powerful Ideas Can Shape Society: Aaron Director and the Triumph of Nihilism

The rise of giants like Amazon and Facebook proves the long-lasting influence of Director's approach. His intellectual and political legacy is the transition of...

If One Monopoly Is Good for the Firm, Are Two Always Better? Aaron Director and the Tie-in Problem

When IBM patented a punch card processing machine, it had the power to influence both the market of machines and punch cards, but this is...

Standard Oil and Antitrust: the Effects of Aaron Director's Socratic Method

Aaron Director, who died 15 years ago, made important contributions to the analysis of business practices. None were ever published under his name. Professor...

Aaron Director’s Legacy: The Beginning of Doubt is the Beginning of Wisdom

Aaron Director died 15 years ago. He published almost nothing, but his ideas influenced a generation of economists and intellectuals. Professor Stephen Stigler remembers...

LATEST NEWS

Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy

In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.

Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?

Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition

Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.

Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation

Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.

Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines

Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.