webinar

Market Power and Money in Politics

A Stigler Center webinar explores how businesses lobby and compete for political power and whether mergers and industry concentration affect lobbying. 

Is There a Problem with Competition?

A Stigler Center webinar explores instances where competition turns toxic, whether antitrust policy needs reform, and potential paths forward.

Should Antitrust Promote Political Liberty? A Stigler Center Webinar Features Fukuyama, McCarty, Teachout, and Nylen

A Stigler Center panel explores the challenges of designing an antitrust enforcement regime that could contend with the political power of corporate...

Lessons from Latin America on Fighting Corruption — a Webinar

A wave of anti-corruption efforts has swept Latin America in the last few years, leading to high-profile convictions but also facing pushback...

Should Antitrust Promote Economic Liberty? A Webinar

Should antitrust be designed to promote economic liberty? Watch a Stigler Center webinar discussing what such a system might look like, and...

Webinar: Mehrsa Baradaran, Eli Cook, and Luigi Zingales on the Complicated Relationship Between Antimonopoly and Race

Watch a discussion between UC Irvine’s Mehrsa Baradaran, Haifa University’s Eli Cook, and Chicago Booth’s Luigi Zingales on the composition, strengths, and weaknesses of...

The United States: An Exceptional Case? A Webinar With Stephen Haber, Richard R. John, and Luigi Zingales

Many see the US as a land where free markets and antitrust enforcement have historically kept monopolies under control. But is that...

Covid-19 and Amazon’s Future: a Webinar With Stacy Mitchell, Steven Kaplan, and Jacob Schlesinger

As part of the Stigler Center’s Political Economy of Covid-19 Series of online programming, which explores the economic and political implications of...

Capital and Ideology: a Webinar With Thomas Piketty, Robert Topel, and Edward Luce

As part of the Stigler Center’s Political Economy of Covid-19 Series of online programming, which explores the economic and political implications of...

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.