Auction

Spectrum Auctions: There Is Elegance in the Mundane

As a student, Booth School Professor Anthony Lee Zhang was puzzled that Paul Milgrom chose to spend so much of his time...

When Scholarship Turns Into Business: Stefano Feltri Responds to Paul Milgrom

Stefano Feltri responds to Paul Milgrom’s criticisms of his recent ProMarket piece on the 2017 FCC spectrum auction.

Should We Leave Public Resource Allocation to the Experts? Glen Weyl Responds to Paul Milgrom

Glen Weyl, Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer Political Economist and Social Technologist, responds to Paul Milgrom’s criticisms of his recent...

Was the 2017 FCC Spectrum Auction a Success—or a Disappointing Failure?

In a post published on his company’s website, Stanford professor Paul Milgrom responded to the recent ProMarket pieces by Glen Weyl and...

It Is Such a Small World: The Market-Design Academic Community Evolved in a Business Network

Private equity funds such as Michael Dell's MSD Capital made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the 2017 FCC spectrum...

How Market Design Economists Helped Engineer a Mass Privatization of Public Resources

In 2017, the Federal Communications Commission conducted a complex two-sided auction to reallocate spectrum from broadcasters to mobile communications companies. The way...

LATEST NEWS

Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists

Former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy Tim Wu responds to the November 27 letter signed by former chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Antitrust Division calling for a separation of the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines.

Can the Public Moderate Social Media?

ProMarket student editor Surya Gowda reviews the arguments made by Paul Gowder in his new book, The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.

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.