virus
Why Social Distancing Measures Seem Less Effective in the US
Guidelines assume that the less people move around, the less likely they are to be in contact. However, phone location data show...
After the Lockdown: Italian Consumers Are Cautious About Returning to Normal
The effects of reopening commercial and recreational activities depend not only on legislative provisions but also on the propensity of consumers to...
How Has the Covid-19 Crisis Affected Hourly Workers at Small Businesses?
Since the coronavirus crisis began, firms have dramatically reduced employee hours. By March 28, total hours declined over 70 percent in states with the...
A New Capitalisn’t Episode: How to Exit the Covid-19 Quarantine – a Reading List
For the good of public health, it's important that we continue staying in quarantine, at least for another month or two. But eventually, we...
Deaths of Despair and Covid-19: a Webinar With Angus Deaton and Luigi Zingales
Deaths of despair are a slow disintegration of working-class lives: Will the coronavirus accelerate this process? In a conversion with Luigi Zingales, Nobel laureate...
Covid Economics: The Marcoeconomic Impact of the Pandemic and Policy Responses
ProMarket reviews the most recent and interesting academic papers on the ongoing pandemic: One paper argues that people do not always fully internalize the...
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...
Is Regulation Jeopardizing Policy Response to Coronavirus Crisis? Sendhil Mullainathan and Richard Thaler Collect Red-tape Stories
Two of the most well-known University of Chicago economists launched a website to collect examples of regulations that are limiting the United States' reaction to...
How and When to Restart the Economy: a Webinar with Nobel Laureate Paul Romer
Princeton Professor Markus Brunnermeier and Nobel laureate economist Paul Romer explore what options we have to stop the pandemic and recover economic activities. Is...
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...
LATEST NEWS
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Economic History
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.
Antitrust and Competition
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.
Antitrust and Competition
The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses
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.
