Board of Directors

Are “Bankruptcy Directors” Bad for Creditors?

A new paper studies the rise of so-called “bankruptcy directors,” typically former bankruptcy lawyers, investment bankers, or distressed debt traders who join...

Elizabeth Holmes Is the Exception: More Women on Boards Lead to Less Corporate Wrongdoing

The so-called “opportunity theory” suggests that women are statistically underrepresented in white-collar offenses because they are underrepresented in higher corporate echelons. A...

Serving Shareholders Doesn’t Mean Putting Profit Above All Else

The time has come for companies, economists, and society to abandon the argument that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits. Editor’s note:...

Firms with Owners in Common Are Freer about Publicly Disclosing Information

The accounting literature has long examined how public disclosures relate to firm competitiveness. If common ownership is in fact hurting competition, companies with owners...

Turning Corporations into Democracies

The problem with encouraging firms to maximize shareholder welfare is how to prevent managers and special interests from diverting corporate resources in the name of shareholder...

Where Friedman Was Wrong

A new paper by Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales argues that a company’s objective should be the maximization of shareholders’ welfare, not value.  In 1970,...

Enhancing Competition? The Role of Governance in Increasing Exposure to Competition

Contemporary corporate governance reform has been a mixed bag: reforms that increase a company’s exposure to competition through the control market have been helpful,...

Are Managers Who Oppose Shareholder Proposals Acting in the Best Interest of Shareholders?

A new Stigler Center working paper finds that managers who resist shareholder proposals are typically acting responsibly, as opposed to acting on their own...

Wells Fargo and the Failure of Boards and Regulators

Two new reports concerning the Wells Fargo scandal suggest that the bank's senior management, its board of directors, and the regulators all knew about the bank's...

The Non-Performing Assets of Wells Fargo

The entire board of Wells Fargo, not just the CEO, needs to be replaced. In 1992, shareholder activist Bob Monks purchased a full-page ad in...

LATEST NEWS

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.

Why the Kroger-Albertsons Merger Is a Mess for Consumers

Grocers Kroger and Albertsons want to merge, which would make them the second biggest retail food chain and, according to them, enhance their ability to compete with Walmart and Costco and offer lower prices to consumers. Christine P. Bartholomew writes that the promises of more competition and lower prices for consumers are unlikely to manifest, and thus the Federal Trade Commission should block the deal.  

After Neoliberalism

The following is an excerpt from Martin Daunton's new book, "The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023," out November 14.

US Taxpayers Should Not Be Subsidizing Harmful Big Oil Mergers

Chevron and ExxonMobil claim their announced mergers with Hess and Pioneer take advantage of market efficiencies, but a closer look reveals an antiquated tax provision likely sweetening these dangerous deals. Antitrust authorities must carefully review the serious risks entailed in these proposed mergers. In parallel, the United States federal government needs to end large tax-free reorganizations—the most egregious way in which American taxpayers are subsidizing monopolistic practices, writes Niko Lusiani.