Doctors

Plagues Upon the Earth: How Wealth Intersects With Mortality

Kyle Harper’s new book, Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, shows that the story of disease is...

Paid to Show the Drug Works: Why “Blind” Clinical Trials for New Drugs are Far Less Blind Than They Should Be

New research shows that physicians in industry-sponsored trials are more captured by pharmaceutical companies than physicians in unsponsored ones.

From Most No-Brainer to Most Complicated: A List of Policy Proposals to Mitigate the Virus’ Impact

Policymakers need to figure out which sectors we wish to keep up and running (food, health care), which sectors we want to contract rapidly...

The Amazon of Health Care: How CVS Is Evolving From a Drug Store Chain into a Tech Platform

CVS is built on a dominant chain of drug stores, but it is now trying to turn itself into a "uniquely powerful platform" for...

Hospital Mergers: The Forgotten Problem of American Health Care

In the US, there are more than 100 hospital mergers every year. This increasing concentration does not lead to the promised savings, nor to...

When Medical Experiments Serve the Business Needs of Pharmaceutical Firms Instead of Science

The first part of a two-part interview with Daniel Goldstein, MD, an oncologist who also studies the influence of business interests on healthcare—from treating patients...

LATEST NEWS

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.

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.

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.

Why the Kroger-Albertsons Merger Is a Mess for Consumers

Grocers Kroger and Albertsons want to merge, which would make them the second biggest retail food chain and, according to them, enhance their ability to compete with Walmart and Costco and offer lower prices to consumers. Christine P. Bartholomew writes that the promises of more competition and lower prices for consumers are unlikely to manifest, and thus the Federal Trade Commission should block the deal.  

After Neoliberalism

The following is an excerpt from Martin Daunton's new book, "The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2023," out November 14.