Disinformation

Economists Agree That Stronger Legal Liability for Online Platforms Would Reduce Disinformation

Will increasing the liability of internet platforms mitigate disinformation? Economists weighed in on the effects of limiting or repealing protections for Big Tech through a recent survey from the Forum for the Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets—previously the Initiative on Global Markets—at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The Challenges of Regulating Disinformation

In response to rising concerns about political disinformation, governments have introduced a slew of interventions. Federico Vaccari warns in new research that...

The “Next Frontier of Propaganda”: Micro-Influencers are Paid to Spread Political Messages, Disinformation

Online influencers aren’t in the business of promoting just products anymore. New research finds that micro-influencers are increasingly used to spread political...

The Good News: Fewer Americans Were Exposed to Fake News in 2018. The Bad News: This Probably Won’t Last

As it turns out, a majority of the American public is not bad at identifying disinformation. But as the 2020 election nears, the online...

We Need to Deal With WhatsApp's Misinformation Problem

A peculiar feature of WhatsApp groups has made the spread of misinformation much easier. We need better design guidelines for platforms like WhatsApp, ones...

LATEST NEWS

Algorithmic Collusion in the Housing Market

While the development of artificial intelligence has led to efficient business strategies, such as dynamic pricing, this new technology is vulnerable to collusion and consumer harm when companies share the same software through a central platform. Gabriele Bortolotti highlights the importance of antitrust enforcement in this domain for the second article in our series, using as a case study the RealPage class action lawsuit in the Seattle housing market.

The Future Markets Model Explains Meta/Within: A Reply to Herb Hovenkamp

In response to both Herb Hovenkamp’s February 27 article in ProMarket and, perhaps more importantly, also to Hovenkamp’s highly regarded treatise, Lawrence B. Landman, first, shows that the Future Markets Model explains the court’s decision in Meta/Within. Since Meta was not even trying to make a future product, the court correctly found that Meta would not enter the Future Market. Second, the Future Markets Model is the analytical tool which Hovenkamp says the enforcers lack when they try to protect competition to innovate.

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.

Creating a Modern Antitrust Welfare Standard that Integrates Post-Chicago and Neo-Brandeisian Goals

Darren Bush, Mark Glick, and Gabriel A. Lozada argue that the Consumer Welfare Standard  is inconsistent with modern welfare economics and that a modern approach to antitrust could integrate traditional Congressional goals as advocated by the Neo-Brandesians. Such an approach could be the basis for an alliance between the post-Chicago economists and the Neo-Brandesians.

Getting Partisans To Listen to One Another Can Reduce Political Polarization

In new research, Guglielmo Briscese and Michèle Belot find that reminding Americans of shared values can open lines of communication and help reduce political polarization.