Academic Capture

Event Notes: Academic Bias Under the Microscope

That scholarship often reflects conscious and unconscious biases has long been an open secret in academia. On April 22, Professors Christian Leuz,...

The Uber Files Reveal The Risk of Private Interests Controlling Our Data

Researchers discovered that the introduction of Uber had negative impacts on transportation, findings that required cooperation with public authorities when Uber refused...

“Uber Has Higher Prices and Worse Service Than the Taxi Industry Had Ten Years Ago”

Following the Uber Files leaks, transportation expert Hubert Horan explains why Uber is “hopelessly uneconomic” and how its engagement with policymakers and...

Relationships With Academics at the Center of the Uber Files Revelations 

The Guardian’s exposé on Uber’s strategy of engaging with top academic researchers to produce corporate-friendly research calls to mind concerns regarding academic...

Academic Gatekeepers, Real and Imagined, Are Threatening the Credibility of the Field of Political Finance 


One objective of political finance is to hold power to account. However, gatekeeping, both direct and indirect, is keeping important work from...

A Call for Comments: Have You Been Affected by Academic Gatekeeping?

On Friday, ProMarket published a piece by Renée Adams about the impact of academic gatekeeping in political finance. Do you have a...

“This Isn’t the Kind of Journalism That Serves Democracy Best”: How Place and Privilege Came to Define American News

In an interview with ProMarket, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Nikki Usher discusses how news in the US came to be...

Iowa’s “Butter-Margarine War”: T. W. Schultz’s Fight for Academic Freedom

During the Second World War, economists at Iowa State College published a pamphlet titled “Putting Dairying on a War Footing,” which would...

Why Big Tech Companies Should Engage With Academia, and Why They Don’t

“Academic engagement” of a Big Tech firm: that job should exist. But it has not happened, and it probably won’t happen, unless...

Government Regulation is the Pro-Market Solution

The Covid-19 pandemic has utterly discredited the false dichotomy of government vs. markets. Extensive government regulation is a prerequisite for the proper...

LATEST NEWS

The Convoluted Regulatory Regime for M&A Assessments in the US

What happens when the goals of antitrust enforcers clash with regulators focused on issues of national security and public interest? A forthcoming book by Ioannis Kokkoris, Public Interest Considerations in US Merger Control, explores these tensions in the United States regulatory framework.

Was Microsoft’s “Polluted Java” a presumptively legal improved product design?

Section 2 defendants often interpret the holdings of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in U.S. v...

Income Inequality May Worsen the Spread of Infectious Disease

Income inequality may exacerbate the spread of infectious diseases. In a new paper, Jay Bhattacharya, Joydeep Bhattacharya, and Min Kyong Kim examine the relationship between income inequality and the incidence and prevalence of tuberculosis across countries.

The Classic Theory of Albert O. Hirschman Argues Against the US Chamber’s Case for Non-Competes

Drawing on the theory of Albert O. Hirschman’s  Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Brian Callaci argues non-compete clauses stifle the important channels of communication between employees and businesses necessary for improving firm competitiveness. The evidence also shows that, despite claims from businesses, non-competes harm rather than reward employees for their loyalty. 

AI For the Antitrust Regulator

Cary Coglianese lays out the potential, and the considerations, for antitrust regulators to use machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms.