Covid
One Year Into the Pandemic: Who Maintains Social Distancing and Who Doesn’t
A new study measures factors associated with the adoption of social distancing across America and finds that widespread adoption of social distancing...
Defying Expectations, Bankruptcy Filings Are Down During the Covid-19 Crisis So Far
Historically, bankruptcy filings have closely tracked the business cycle and unemployment rates. However, a recent study found that this relationship has reversed...
Regulators Should Keep a Close Eye on the Little Guys in the Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine
As the race to find a Covid-19 vaccine or treatment rages on, many have raised concerns over trustworthiness of clinical research and...
Why Consolidation Undermined the Airline Industry’s Ability to Recover from the Coronavirus Crisis
A major factor contributing to the industry’s struggles during the current crisis was the loss of resiliency due to the consolidation...
How to Save 40 percent of the Payroll Protection Program’s Costs
Thanks to the loan program part of the CARES Act, small businesses can receive up to 2.5 times their monthly payroll, regardless of how much...
Back to Work? The Political Preparation for “Phase 2” of the Pandemic Is a Matter of Trust
According to a special wave of the Booth/Kellogg Financial Trust Index, Americans have bought into social distancing rules. However, most of the respondents are...
The Coronavirus Crisis Has Exposed Private Equity’s Unsustainable Business Model
Private equity portfolio companies are heavily indebted, and they aren’t generating enough cash to service debts. The steady increase in asset values...
During a Pandemic, Beware the Man of One Model
"I have great respect for the scientific model builders who attempt at quantifying the uncertainty we face and those policy advisors who are willing to accept differences...
Trump Voters Were More Reluctant to Acknowledge the Seriousness of the Pandemic and Adapt Their Behavior Accordingly
Using data on individuals' search behavior and cellphone movement data, a new study shows that areas with a high share of Trump voters began...
Is Regulation Jeopardizing Policy Response to Coronavirus Crisis? Sendhil Mullainathan and Richard Thaler Collect Red-tape Stories
Two of the most well-known University of Chicago economists launched a website to collect examples of regulations that are limiting the United States' reaction to...
LATEST NEWS
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
