Financial Crisis

Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (May 19–26)

Trump signs the largest rollback of financial regulations since the 2008 crisis into law; Zuckerberg masterfully evades the questions of European parliamentarians; Amazon has...

Can Credit Tightening Spur Social Unrest? Evidence from 1930s China

In 1933 the United States launched its Silver Purchase program, which raised silver prices worldwide, drained China’s silver stock, and caused credit to Chinese...

How Politicians Intensify Financial Cycles: 300 Years of Pro-Cyclical Regulation

Three hundred years of financial regulation offer a cautionary tale to today’s push against yesterday’s regulations. This column revisits the political economy of financial...

Did US Banks Try to Manipulate the Dodd-Frank Debate by Delaying Mortgage Foreclosures?

Did banks delay foreclosures on delinquent mortgages in the districts of House Financial Services Committee members prior to the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act?     The...

Who Is to Blame for the 2008 Financial Crisis?

The IGM Center at the University of Chicago has asked its American and European economist panel to rate the main causes of the financial...

Democracy Against Domination: Overcoming Economic Power and Regulatory Failure in the New Gilded Age

The financial crisis—and the limits of our regulatory response to the crash—offer important lessons for our broader understandings of how to conceptualize and institutionalize...

Watch: Deutsche Bank Whistleblower Eric Ben-Artzi Explains What it Takes to Blow the Whistle on Fraud

Ben-Artzi: "The problem is not that you have misbehavior on Wall Street. It's that you have misbehavior by the people who are supposed to...

The 'Argumentum a Crise': So Powerful, So Prone to Misuse

Since the financial crisis and the related euro debt crisis, the use of the argumentum a crise has been ubiquitous. A more selective use...

LATEST NEWS

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.

US Taxpayers Should Not Be Subsidizing Harmful Big Oil Mergers

Chevron and ExxonMobil claim their announced mergers with Hess and Pioneer take advantage of market efficiencies, but a closer look reveals an antiquated tax provision likely sweetening these dangerous deals. Antitrust authorities must carefully review the serious risks entailed in these proposed mergers. In parallel, the United States federal government needs to end large tax-free reorganizations—the most egregious way in which American taxpayers are subsidizing monopolistic practices, writes Niko Lusiani.