neoliberalism
Revisiting Milton Friedman
The following is an excerpt from Jennifer Burns' new book "Milton Friedman, The Last Conservative," out November 14.
The Chicago Boys and the Chilean Neoliberal Project
In a new book, The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism, Sebastian Edwards details the history of neoliberalism in Chile over the past seventy years. The Chicago Boys—a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago through the U.S. State Department’s “Chile Project”—played a central role in neoliberalism’s ascent during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. What follows is an excerpt from the book on University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s 1975 visit to Chile to meet with Pinochet and business leaders.
The Road to Hayek: A Comprehensive History of Neoliberalism’s Forefather
In their first of two volumes, historians of economics Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger access new archival material to explore the first...
Neoliberalism Beyond the Heartlands
Much of the historical analysis of neoliberalism, both its ideological roots and its outcomes, has focused on U.S. and Europe, with figures...
Neoliberal Economists Are Giving Biden Bad Advice on Inflation
To spare the economy from the pain of further interest rate hikes, the President should aggressively pursue anticompetitive conduct by companies in...
How China Became a Global Economic Powerhouse Through an Idiosyncratic Approach to Market Capitalism
Chinese reformers after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 agreed that it was necessary for China to move towards marketization, but...
“Old Chicago” and Freiburg: Why Ordoliberalism Was No “German Oddity”
Both the Chicago and Freiburg schools faced systemic fragility as the crucial property of societal orders. It was this fragility that served...
Are Intellectual Property Rights Neoliberal? Yes and No
Today’s global IP regime is often described by critical scholars bluntly as “neoliberal.” But in fact, the topic of intellectual property rights...
“Amazon Is Getting Richer by the Moment —But There’s a Limit to How Many People Jeff Bezos Can Buy”
In an interview with ProMarket, Barry Lynn discusses the current state of American antimonopoly, what the Covid-19 crisis has taught us about...
Chile's Fall From Grace Shows the Failures of Neoliberalism
For many years, Chile’s economic growth and transition to democracy have made it the poster boy for neoliberalism. The current wave of protests highlights...
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.