Corporate Culture

How Corporate Purpose Affects Firms

A company’s purpose is a core aspect of the organization: it influences the financial performance of company, and relates to its ownership...

Wirecard Scandal: When All Lines of Defense Against Corporate Fraud Fail

Scandals such as Wirecard can destroy investor trust in capital markets working fairly and with integrity. A new policy brief commissioned by...

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:...

Elon Musk Wants to Get Paid. He Will Get His 2019 Bonus Thanks to an Accounting Magic

In March 2018, Tesla’s Board of Directors granted Musk a potential bonus of 20,264,042 stock option awards under a  plan that uses “adjusted EBITDA” as one...

The Uber Bubble: Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful?

In the first of three interrelated articles, transportation consultant Hubert Horan discusses Uber's "uncompetitive economics." There is no real innovation in the company's business...

The SEC's Proposal on Proxy Advisor Regulation Shields CEOs From Accountability to Investors

SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson dissented from his SEC colleagues' proposal on how to reform proxy advisors regulation. New rules, he argues, would introduce a...

New Empirical Studies Show: When It Comes to Productivity, Management Matters

Research has shown that studying the causes and implications of management across organizations can be of much benefit to economics. It is well documented((This piece...

Making Your Vote Count: Does the Voting Behavior of Asset Managers Truly Reflect Their Clients’ Interests?

In the past five years, thanks to growing public pressure, there has been increased attention on the voting behavior of asset managers. As a...

Is Lionizing CEOs Dangerous for Society?

In an interview with ProMarket, Open University's Peter Bloom talks about his provocative new book CEO Society and why he believes celebrating corporate CEOs...

Do We Need to Mandate Firms’ Reporting And Auditing?

Back in the 1960s, George Stigler called into question whether states should require firms to publicly report their financials. A recent Stigler Center working...

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.