wages

Low Wages are Less Common Today and No More Persistent

Researchers find that a smaller fraction of workers today earn low wages than at any point since the early 1980s.

The Corporate Power Narrative: How Corporations Benefit from Economic Globalization

In an excerpt from their new book, Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters, Anthea Roberts and...

The Profit Paradox: A New Approach to Competition and Market Power

Jan Eeckhout’s recent book The Profit Paradox is a serious attempt to explain rising market power and its implications to a wider...

Charting a Path Forward for College Athletes to Receive Pay

How should colleges pay their student-athletes? A likely model lies with another group of university students, who like near-pro athletes receive tuition...

States Beat NCAA, Feds in Race Towards Student-Athlete Pay

For decades, NCAA amateurism regulations limited student-athlete benefits to scholarships and related stipends, even as revenues soared into the billion dollar range....

Do Employees Benefit From Worker Representation on Corporate Boards?

Mandated legislation of worker representation is unlikely to be the magic bullet some policy-makers have pictured. A new paper finds workers may...

Do Companies Invest In Corporate Social Responsibility At the Expense of Their Employees?

The past decade has seen companies increasing investments in initiatives of corporate social responsibility (CSR), such as donating a share of profits...

Millennials and Gen Z Are Willing to Accept Lower Wages to Work in More Sustainable Firms

Firms in more environmentally friendly sectors are better able to attract and retain talent and at lower wages. Millennials and Gen Z,...

The Effects of Student Debt Forgiveness

While student loan forgiveness is undoubtedly expensive, research suggests that individuals whose debt is forgiven get better jobs, experience higher mobility, and...

Covid Economics: Social Distancing and the Relevant Benefits of Cost-Benefit Analysis

ProMarket reviews the most recent and interesting academic papers on the ongoing pandemic: Michael Greenstone and Vishan Nigam of the University of Chicago estimate that...

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.