sustainability

Event Notes: Populism and Economics in Latin America

Recent elections have led to a shift in power and ideology across Latin America. Newly elected leaders have brought a new outlook...

Why Aligning Antitrust Policy With Sustainability is a Moral Imperative 

The looming ecological disaster means that it is time for competition researchers, policymakers, lawyers, and economists to devise competition policies that focus...

The World’s First Green Antitrust Provision Shows that Climate Action is the Newest Antitrust Frontier

Late last year, Austria became the first country to enact a green antitrust provision—an exemption shielding corporate agreements related to environmental sustainability...

Antitrust and Sustainability: An Introduction to an Ongoing Debate

Can sustainability play a role in antitrust enforcement? And should it? Lund University professor Julian Nowag explores the debate around that intersection...

Two Years After the Business Roundtable Statement: Pointing in the Right Direction

The 2019 Business Roundtable statement was a welcome break from the position that the nation’s top corporate CEOs took in 1997, when...

Green Antitrust: Why Would Restricting Competition Induce Sustainability Efforts?

While “green” antitrust is gaining momentum, its key premise—that restricting competition would incentivize companies to jointly take more sustainability initiatives—finds little or...

Covid-19, Central Banks, and Debt Monetization: a Webinar With Olivier Blanchard

Princeton Professor Markus Brunnermeier and former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard discuss the impact of the current global health crisis on public finances and policy...

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.