Boeing

The Stimulus Package Is Too Expensive and Poorly Targeted: The Waste Contained in the CARES Act

A cost-effective stimulus to mend the effects of a 24 percent drop in GDP would cost no more than $1.3 trillion over a 6-month...

This Is Not a Financial Crisis, So Why Should We Bailout Wall Street (Again)?

Republican and Democratic Senators reached a deal on a $2 trillion bill to help businesses and people hit by the coronavirus outbreak. But the...

Please, Don’t Use Taxpayer Money to Bail Out Investors Like Me

When we invested in stocks and bonds, we knew we might have to face a storm or two. The high returns we received on...

The Covid-19 Bailout That Big Business Is Lobbying for Could Make America Unrecognizable

Supporting industries is necessary to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic. But using the coronavirus as an excuse, Boeing and other companies are...

US Big Business vs China: How Monopolies Harm National Security

China’s goal is to concentrate power, both within China and over Western industrial commons. The best reaction is not to mimic Chinese autocratic control...

Bethany McLean's Weekend Reading List: Google’s Secrets, Banking, and Boeing

Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.    I think I've been reading too many...

The Surprising Twist in GOP Economic Thinking: Tax Cuts Might Be Bad for Business

Senator Mitt Romney wrote Donald Trump a letter to stop his plan to reduce capital gain taxes. This is an important signal that a...

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.