special interest groups

What Citizens United Did Not Predict and Why It’s Time To Reconsider

Citizens United v. FEC stands in the public eye as the U.S. Supreme Court case that flooded U.S. elections with “dark money”...

How Interest Groups Utilize Reverse Revolving Doors to Influence Legislative Voting

A new study finds that legislators who worked for interest groups before taking office influence the voting behavior of their colleagues when...

Fake Comments Cause Real Harm: How the Public Comment Process Was Corrupted

Turning a blind eye to the corruption of the public comment process—or worse, lumping together genuine mass comments with fraudulent comments—corrupts the...

How Do Members of Congress React to the Potential of Lucrative Private Sector Employment?

Many fear that the potential for well-paid post-elective jobs can make legislators give rewards to their future employers. A new study finds that career...

A Tale of Two Cities: Hamburg and Lübeck

The German cities of Hamburg and Lübeck have an interwoven and eventful history. Whereas Lübeck offers an example of how dominant cities may become unattractive...

Is Direct Democracy Better Able to Withstand the Influence of Special Interests?

A new Stigler Center working paper looks into the effects of referendums and public initiatives on public policy and finds that direct democracy better...

How Many Newt Gingrich's Are There in Washington? Much More Than You Might Think

As more and more lobbyists move to consulting and PR agencies, experts say the underworld of hidden lobbying is probably much bigger than what formal...

Donald Trump’s Economic Policies: Pro-Business, Not Pro-Market

Trump is eliminating lobbyists by putting them in charge of all departments. After his election,((This post was originally published in Il Sole 24 Ore.)) it was...

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...

Are Special Interests Dooming the Euro to Fail?

As the Eurozone struggles to stave off a lingering economic crisis, four economists debate the measures necessary to ensure its survival and what’s preventing...

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.