Taxes

How Insufficient Enforcement Led to Prevalent Tax Evasion and Contributed to American Inequality

The prevalence of tax evasion among the top 1 percent of the income distribution is much worse than previously thought, a study...

Three Ways Tax Policies Increase the Black-White Racial Wealth Gap

Dorothy Brown, the author of The Whiteness of Wealth, explains how tax breaks for marriage, college, and gifts and inheritance contribute to...

OpenLux: Why the Era of Financial Secrecy Needs to End

The #OpenLux investigation underlines that, despite undeniable progress in terms of transparency, there is still considerable work to be done in the...

OpenLux: Despite Reform Efforts, Luxembourg Remains an “Offshore Hub in the Heart of Europe”

Dozens of foreign citizens linked to corruption, embezzlement of public funds, organized crime, and tax crime have opened companies in Luxembourg, seemingly...

The Case for Optimism About America

The good news is that America is still the engine of global wealth creation: nothing fosters political pragmatism like prosperity. But there...

How the European Commission Lost Its Tax Battle Against Ireland and Apple

Last month’s decision by Europe’s General Court to reject the European Commission’s attempt to recover €13 billion in back taxes from Apple...

A New Capitalisn't Episode: The Controversial Tax Policies Of Emmanuel Saez

In a new episode of their podcast Capitalisn't, Luigi Zingales and Kate Waldock interview UC Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez on tax policy, the wealth...

Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren: The Real Impact of Democratic Candidates' Tax Plans

According to UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, all of the Democratic candidates' plans increase tax rates on the rich but to...

The Surprising Twist in GOP Economic Thinking: Tax Cuts Might Be Bad for Business

Senator Mitt Romney wrote Donald Trump a letter to stop his plan to reduce capital gain taxes. This is an important signal that a...

Why American Voters Are Still Not Ready to Support Carbon Taxes

Economists and policy elites love carbon taxes, but voters dislike them. A new study suggests that ideology has a lot to do with it....

LATEST NEWS

Revising Guideline 6 With Evidence To Establish a Structural Inference for Input Foreclosure

Vertical merger law lacks the structural presumption of horizontal merger law, which shifts the burden from the government to the merging parties to provide evidence that a merger will not produce anticompetitive effects when it is known that the merger will substantially increase market concentration. To improve Guideline 6 of the draft Merger Guidelines concerning vertical foreclosure, Steven Salop develops a three-factor criteria with which the government antitrust agencies can show an analogous structural “inference” that shifts the burden of evidence to the merging parties.

How US Antitrust Enforcement Against Xerox Promoted Innovation by Japanese Competitors

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.