Jackson

Chart of the Week: Both Democrat- and Republican-Nominated Supreme Court Justices Increasingly Ruled Against Antitrust Enforcement

With the upcoming vote to confirm new Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, this week’s chart highlights a new dataset compiled...

Over 60 Leading Finance Economists Ask SEC to Revise the Shareholder Voting Draft Reform

The new regulation that Security and Exchange Commissioners voted in November doesn't fix proxy advisory industry duopoly problems, but it actually makes them worse:...

Shareholders at the Gate: The Increasing Pressure on CEOs for More Transparency

The average share of votes in favor of proposals that require corporate executives to disclose political and lobbying spending is trending up. But a...

The SEC Proposal on Proxy Advisory Firms Will Provide Greater Transparency and Accountability

Proxy advisory firms lack transparency and their recommendations are not always in shareholders' interests. However, despite their poor performance, the two biggest firms' market...

Fake Letters Poisoned the Debate on SEC's New Rules on Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisory Firms

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton claimed that the draft regulation on shareholders' votes and proxy advisory firms received approval by hundreds of "Main Street" Americans....

LATEST NEWS

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.

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.

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.