Congress
The US Has A Budgeting Problem…Not Exactly A Debt Ceiling Issue
Kurt Davis Jr. argues that the U.S. Congress should consider switching from a federal debt ceiling as a nominal value to one fixed as a percentage of GDP. This debt ceiling should, on the one hand, be high enough that the government cannot reasonably cross it, but punitive enough that it disincentivizes profligate spending. This will save the U.S. from the annual political theater that occurs around debt ceiling talks and focus the discussion on the federal budget (and potentially taking revenue and spending decisions to actually control the deficit).
Rep. Ken Buck on the Need for Antitrust Reform: “Big Corporate America Scares People”
In an interview with ProMarket, Republican congressman Ken Buck explains why antitrust enforcement is so crucial to the US economy and American democracy,...
Antitrust at CPAC: Conservatives Debate Breaking Up Big Tech
Speaking at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, Congressmen Darrell Issa and Ken Buck discussed their stances on breaking up Big Tech,...
Structural Separation and Self-Preferencing: What are the Right Lessons of History?
IBM’s entry into the PC market can teach us a lot about the risks involved with the sort of structural separations recommended...
The House’s Big Tech Hearing: Break Ups Large and Small?
Last week’s epic House hearing on online platforms raised many issues, chief among which was the question who gets to operate at...
Top 10 Admissions from Tech CEOs Secured at the Antitrust Hearing
This week’s Congressional hearing produced evidence of anticompetitive conduct that state attorneys general and private enforcers can use to pursue the dominant...
What Congress Should Ask Big Tech CEOs
This week, the House Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on digital platforms and market power, during which members will get...
Congress Can Move Now to Stop Amazon’s Cloning Factory. Here’s How
If there was any doubt that online marketplaces should be considered a separate market before the coronavirus wiped out brick-and-mortar retail,...
How to Save American Middle-Sized Businesses from the Coronavirus Supply-Chain Crisis
Congress passed an $8.3 billion spending bill to address the coronavirus epidemic, but the bill will not protect small companies. Republican Senator Marco Rubio put forward...
How Do Members of Congress React to the Potential of Lucrative Private Sector Employment?
Many fear that the potential for well-paid post-elective jobs can make legislators give rewards to their future employers. A new study finds that career...
LATEST NEWS
Income Inequality
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.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Research
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
