Corporate Governance

Event Notes: Shareholder Democracy

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted with the Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, in partnership with the Financial Times, a virtual event discussing shareholder democracy with Lisa Fairfax, Alex Thaler and Luigi Zingales. The following is a transcript of the event.

ESG Standards’ Good, Bad and Ugly

The Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State hosted a virtual event discussing the standards, metrics and disclosures of investments focused on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. The following is a transcript of the event.

Investing in Influence: Investors, Portfolio Firms, and Political Giving

A new paper examines the relationship between the rising concentration in institutional investors' ownership of publicly traded U.S. firms and portfolio companies'...

How To Ensure Industrial Policy Promotes Public Over Private Gain

Industrial policy was once so out of fashion that it was jokingly called “the policy that shall not be named.” Now it’s...

The Year’s Top 5 Capitalisn’t Podcast Episodes

This year's top five most-downloaded episodes of Capitalisn't ranged from discussions of private equity and inflation to Capitalism itself. Download these episodes...

Shareholder Democracy Doesn’t Work. Here’s How It Can.

An opinion piece by Oliver Hart and Luigi Zingales describes how a new voting mechanism could help individual investors persuade companies to...

Corporations Are Not “We the People”

The Citizens United ruling contradicts the Founders, decades of Supreme Court precedent and the will of the American people.

Event Notes: Whose Business is Health?

On Oct.14, the Hopkins Business of Health Initiative hosted a panel discussing if and how companies should consider the health implications of...

Is Big Business Ungovernable? 

Regulators should dedicate more resources to pursuing big cases against the biggest market actors, even if it means compiling far fewer enforcement...

Have Business Roundtable Companies Lived Up to Their Stakeholder Commitments?  

In 2019, more than 100 CEOs of US public companies signed a Business Roundtable statement in which they pledged to deliver value...

LATEST NEWS

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.

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.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.