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Spoils System

The Benefits of Working for a Victorious Political Campaign

With slightly more than one year until the United States presidential election, electoral campaigns are about to ramp up. These quadrennial elections, like so many others in democracies worldwide, will mobilize thousands of campaign workers who play an integral role in shaping candidates’ electoral performance. Yet, little is known about these workers and how the experience of working in a campaign shapes their professional lives. This column describes the findings from a new study on the career trajectories of campaign labor in Brazil, showing that connections forged on a campaign provide qualified workers with better employment and earnings opportunities. This article was originally published in VoxEU.
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Antitrust and Competition

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

Robin Mamrak
Xerox invented modern copier technology and was so successful that its brand name became a verb. In 1972, U.S. antitrust authorities charged Xerox with monopolization and eventually ordered the licensing of all its copier-related patents. As new research by Robin Mamrak shows, this antitrust intervention promoted subsequent innovation in the copier industry, but only among Japanese competitors. Nevertheless, their innovations benefited U.S. consumers.
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Antitrust and Competition

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

John Kwoka
The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.
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Economic History

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

Cyril Hédoin, Alexandre Chirat
In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.
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Antitrust and Competition

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, Anna Toldrà-Simats
In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.
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Antitrust and Competition

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray, Cristian Santesteban
Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.
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ProMarket is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket Policy.

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