Healthcare
Tech Isn’t the Only Sector Deserving of Antitrust Investigation
The House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust report was a missed opportunity. The 450-page report focused solely on digital markets. But what about antitrust...
Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Free Money, Hospitals, and Private Equity Firms
Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
Economic Crisis and Poverty Might Kill More People Than the Coronavirus
Saving lives is the priority. Doing so depends on a delicate balance between health, economic, and social variables. But, above all, it depends on a population that trusts that these measures seek the common good, not the interest of a few.
The Fight Against Coronavirus: What the US Can Learn from Italian Hospitals on How to Prevent a Disaster
In a Facebook post that has since become viral, Italian doctor Daniele Macchini offered a first-hand testimony from the Lombardy region, the epicenter of...
The Real Price of Health Data: Americans Don’t Want to Share Their Records for Free
The 2019 Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index survey shows that 93 percent of participants don’t want to share their health data with digital...
How “Paperwork Sludge” Keeps Americans From Enjoying Fundamental Rights
Every year, Americans spend 9.78 billion hours filling out federal paperwork. These administrative burdens can make it difficult or impossible for people to vote...
Study: Medicaid Expansion in Michigan Led to Less Financial Distress
A new study finds that obtaining health insurance coverage leads to lower unpaid debt, fewer bankruptcies, fewer evictions, fewer late payments, and higher credit...
The Generic Pharmaceutical Market Needs Competition. Non-Profits Can Provide It
JustMedicine is a non-profit that aims to introduce competition into the generic drug market by sponsoring generic entrants. The organization’s CEO explains why non-profit...
Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (December 2-9)
Documents released by British Parliament show Facebook’s attempts to stifle competition; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau no longer protects consumers; provider consolidation is driving...
The Secret Driver of US Health Care Costs: Politicians Wanting to Get Reelected
A pioneering new study provides a first-of-its-kind look into the outsized effect that lobbying and political maneuverings have on health care spending.
Americans spend significantly more...
LATEST NEWS
Income Inequality
Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy
In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?
Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Research
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
