Chile
The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project
In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.
Five International Journalists Explain How the War in Ukraine Is Playing Out Globally
The 2022 class of the Stigler Center’s Journalists in Residence program offer their thoughts regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The Complicated Legacy of the “Chicago Boys” in Chile
How did a group of Chicago-trained economists manage to turn Chile into the cradle of neoliberalism? As the country aims to move...
Economic Crisis and Poverty Might Kill More People Than the Coronavirus
Saving lives is the priority. Doing so depends on a delicate balance between health, economic, and social variables. But, above all, it depends on a population that trusts that these measures seek the common good, not the interest of a few.
In Chile, It Is Always the Banks That Decide the Direction of Politics
Chile's government announced it would deliver $24 billion in state-guaranteed loans through the financial system to save companies at risk of bankruptcy due to the...
Chile Reaches Its Greenspan Moment
"I am in a state of shocked disbelief," former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan said during the 2008 crisis, before confessing: "I found a...
Populism Weakened the Immune System of Our Democracies. Chile Is an Example
Modern societies have developed immune systems to deal with epidemics: international cooperation, social cohesion, universal health care systems. But today we face the greatest...
Why an Antimonopoly Movement Is the Kind of Populism That Chile Needs
President Piñera's approval rating has reached a record low, not just for the Chilean democracy, but for all of South America. The rise of...
Economics Podcast Recommendations: Esther Duflo on Poverty, James Robinson on Development, and Cesar Hidalgo on Chile
ProMarket’s picks for the best podcasts covering economics, finance, and political economy.
HBR Ideacast: Esther Duflo
In this episode of the Harvard Business Review's weekly HBR...
The Reality of Inequality and Its Perception: Chile’s Paradox Explained
While conventional indicators show a significant decline in inequality, the perception among Chile’s citizens is that inequality has greatly increased. The development model Chile...
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Antitrust and Competition
Merged Firms Offer Less Product Variety
In new research, Enghin Atalay, Alan Sorensen, Christopher Sullivan, and Wanjia Zhu find that mergers and acquisitions often lead to the merged firm offering less product variety than when the two firms operated pre-merger.
Antitrust and Competition
Revising Guideline 6 With Evidence To Establish a Structural Inference for Input Foreclosure
Vertical merger law lacks the structural presumption of horizontal merger law, which shifts the burden from the government to the merging parties to provide evidence that a merger will not produce anticompetitive effects when it is known that the merger will substantially increase market concentration. To improve Guideline 6 of the draft Merger Guidelines concerning vertical foreclosure, Steven Salop develops a three-factor criteria with which the government antitrust agencies can show an analogous structural “inference” that shifts the burden of evidence to the merging parties.
Antitrust and Competition
How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors
Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.
Antitrust and Competition
Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation
The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.
Economic History
How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism
In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.