Trump
Back to Work? The Political Preparation for “Phase 2” of the Pandemic Is a Matter of Trust
According to a special wave of the Booth/Kellogg Financial Trust Index, Americans have bought into social distancing rules. However, most of the respondents are...
Trump Voters Were More Reluctant to Acknowledge the Seriousness of the Pandemic and Adapt Their Behavior Accordingly
Using data on individuals' search behavior and cellphone movement data, a new study shows that areas with a high share of Trump voters began...
MBA Students Against Corporate America: “Stop Lobbying the White House on the Defense Production Act”
Since the virus outbreak, the US Chamber of Commerce has lobbied the federal government to limit the use of a piece of legislation that...
How Private Equity Companies Are Lobbying to Profit from The Covid-19 Economic Fallout
Private equity funds aren’t just seeking to save the investments they already have, but to get access to more capital to invest in a...
From Borrowing to Stockpiling: How The Virus Outbreak Changed American Household Consumption
The first academic study of American consumers' reaction to the pandemic finds that total spending rose by half between February 26 and March 11,...
Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Covid-19 Models, Grocery Stores, and Bank Robberies
Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. Maybe we...
How Covid-19 Infected Global Financial Markets: a Webinar
Princeton Professor Markus Brunnermeier and Torsten Slok, Chief Economist for Deutsche Bank Securities, discuss what happened during Wall Street's worst week since the 2008...
Many Republicans Are Skeptical About Coronavirus. Research Suggests That Republican Politicians Could Change That
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is skeptical of climate change, supports teaching creationism in public schools, and opposes stem cell research. That's exactly why...
Why More Elderly People Get Infected in Some Countries Compared to Others
Italy has a mortality rate of 6 percent while countries like Norway, Denmark, and Germany have rates still close to zero percent. The...
Why Elizabeth Warren Has Not Endorsed Joe Biden (Yet)
After winning in four more states, Biden can expect to have the necessary 1,991 delegates long before the July Democratic convention in Milwaukee. Elizabeth Warren...
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.
