Markets

The Metaphysics of Regulatory Capture

Stiglerian capture and corrosive cultural capture, its left-leaning parallel, are ostensibly symbionts, two attempts at identifying impediments to keeping markets competitive by...

Invigorating Competition in Health Care Markets: Is Rate Regulation Needed?

It now appears that market concentration may be the leading cause of America’s health care cost crisis. If the United States is...

Rethinking Competition: From Market Failures to Ecosystem Failures

Despite the overwhelming importance of digital platforms, and the chatter around their recent rise, our understanding of digital ecosystems is still limited....

A Simple Way to Measure Tipping in Digital Markets

Digital markets are prone to “tipping.” Policymakers are starting to look at tipping as a market failure worthy of consideration. But as...

The Texas Power Failure: How One Market Model Discovered Its Natural Limits

Relying on marginal market prices to provide the incentives for the production and delivery of electricity means that all of the biophysical...

The Texas Blackouts and the Problems of Electricity Market Design

Even in an ideal electricity market, reliability is an elusive and precarious byproduct of companies’ search for profits. Since market designers are...

Insider Trading Data Reveals Pandemic Is a Time for Questioning, Not Answering

Following news reports about executives selling shares in their corporations to avoid losses due to the pandemic, a new study takes a...

A New Capitalisn’t Episode: a Coronavirus Reading List

In this episode, Kate and Luigi give an economist's view of the coronavirus outbreak: How should we think about the economic trade-offs of interventionist...

The Secret Code of Capital and the Origin of Wealth Inequality

Capital is not a thing, but a social relation enforced by the law and the state. With the right legal coding, any object, claim,...

The Problem With Unicorns: Why Investors Stopped WeWork From Going Public

More and more startups are valued at over $1 billion, even if they have dysfunctional corporate structures and hazardous business models. For tech companies,...

LATEST NEWS

The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Threatens Smaller Upstream Suppliers

Much of the conversation of the proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger has focused on the risks to consumers. However, the merger also poses serious implications for the grocers’ upstream suppliers, particularly smaller regional firms.

Why Have Uninsured Depositors Become De Facto Insured?

Due to a change in how the FDIC resolves failed banks, uninsured deposits have become de facto insured. Not only is this dangerous for risk in the banking system, it is not what Congress intends the FDIC to do, writes Michael Ohlrogge.

Merger Law Reaches Acquirer Incentives and Private Equity Strategies

Steven C. Salop argues that Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers in which the acquiring firm’s unilateral incentives and business strategy are likely to lessen market competition.

Tim Wu Responds to Letter by Former Agency Chief Economists

Former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy Tim Wu responds to the November 27 letter signed by former chief economists at the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department Antitrust Division calling for a separation of the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines.

Can the Public Moderate Social Media?

ProMarket student editor Surya Gowda reviews the arguments made by Paul Gowder in his new book, The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms.