A new Stigler Center working paper systematically analyzed and summarized 21 reports issued by 17 antitrust authorities and expert panels on the subject of digital platforms and competition. The different reports largely agree that governments need to do more to promote competition in the digital world. However, there are some disagreements on how to do so. ProMarket readers need no introduction to the growing importance of digital markets in...

RESEARCH

COMMENTARIES

Emmanuel Farhi, Economist and Renaissance Man

Matteo Maggiori eulogizes Harvard economist Emmanuel Farhi, who passed away last month...

PODCAST

A New Capitalisn’t Episode

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READING LIST

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...

The Childcare Barriers to Putting America Back to Work

Substantial fractions of the US labor force have children at home and will likely face obstacles in returning to work if childcare...

The Paycheck Protection Program, Meant to Prevent Mass Layoffs, Missed Its Target

A new study shows that CARES Act funds to support small companies and prevent mass layoffs did not flow to areas more...

How Are Americans Coping With the Covid-19 Crisis? 7 Key Findings From a Household Survey

New research from the Rustandy Center and the Poverty Lab at the University of Chicago finds that lower-income Americans, especially women,...

READING LIST

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of white police officers in Minneapolis and the ensuing global outrage, an unprecedented focus on the causes of police violence and misconduct has emerged. Should the police be “defunded,” as many protesters demand, or should US law enforcement reformed in other ways? ProMarket investigates.

Police Stops of Black Drivers Increase Following Trump Rallies, New Study Suggests 

A new study looks into how Trump's 2016 presidential campaign affected police behavior toward Black Americans and finds that the probability that...

Prison Labor Can Create Perverse Incentives for Incarceration and Reduce Trust in Legal Institutions

Government proponents of prison labor should be mindful of the potential for negative effects, including increased incarceration rates and citizens’ deteriorating views...

Few Bad Apples? New Study Finds That 40 Percent of Officers in a Large Police Force Are Discriminatory

A new paper seeks to examine whether police misbehavior is concentrated or diffuse by identifying whether highway patrol officers in Florida are...

What is the Connection Between Collective Bargaining and Police Officer Misconduct? Evidence from Florida

A working paper finds that after sheriffs’ deputies in Florida were allowed to unionize, violent incidents increased by 40 percent.

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 really the case?  Watch a conversation between Stanford University professor Stephen Haber, Columbia University professor Richard R. John, and Luigi Zingales. The Stigler Center’s Monopolies and Politics Workshop Webinar Series explores the interconnection between monopolies and politics, and the historical evidence of monopolies capturing national governments and...

The Economic and Social Implications of Racial Disparities: A Webinar With Lisa Cook

Michigan State University professor Lisa Cook joined Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance to discuss how violence impacts innovation, as well as the economic and societal fissures exposed by Covid-19.  On...

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 Covid-19 with leading academics and experts, we recently hosted a conversation between Stacy Mitchell, co-director...

Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Growth, Amazon, and Baseball

Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.      In school, our kids learn about having...

COLUMNS

Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Big Tech, Hospital Bills, and the Lost “Covid Generation”

Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean. 

Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: The Covid Storm, the Greatest Debt Binge, and How Did the Internet Get So Bad?

Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean. 

Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Eastman Kodak, Private Equity Hospitals, and America’s First Female Recession

Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean. 

Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: Google, Shale, and Fraudulent Honey

Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean. 

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LATEST

“Thank You and Farewell”: Francesco Trebbi on Alberto Alesina’s Intellectual Legacy 


There are two main intellectual precursors of modern political economy in 20th Century: Social Choice and Public Choice. In founding modern political...

To Ban Or Not to Ban TikTok: How Reciprocity on the Internet Could Backfire

Reciprocity can work on a chalkboard, in simple settings. In real-world settings such as trade, it has proven to be ineffective.

Why We Should Be Careful About Google’s Promises in the Fitbit Deal

Google claims its acquisition of Fitbit is not about data, but hardware. This is simply not credible. Data plays a crucial role...

Self-Favoring in the Digital Economy and the Role of Antitrust

At the moment, the strategy of the major tech platforms seems to be to deny any bias and malicious self-favoring. The facts,...

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...

Monopolies: Silent Spreaders of Poverty and Economic Inequality

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the vast inequalities that exist within the US economy. Monopoly power should be at the top of...

The Monopoly Harms That Antitrust Keeps Missing

In his new book Monopolized, journalist David Dayen tells the stories of individuals who have suffered at the hands of monopolists, showing...

Special Interests Hide Behind Regulatory Myths

Three myths about federal regulation help prevent much of the public, and many experts, from realizing how many regulations serve to promote...

ALSO READ

Tech Monopolies Are the Reason the US Now Has a TikTok Problem

Tech platforms like Facebook say we should protect, empower, and celebrate their concentrated power for the sake of America’s national security. But...

Should We Defund the Police? A New Capitalisn’t Reading List

In this episode of the Capitalisn't podcast, Kate and Luigi take an economist's look at the concept of defunding the police.

Who Is to Blame for the 2008 Financial Crisis?

The IGM Center at the University of Chicago has asked its American and European economist panel to rate the main causes of the financial...

“Alberto Alesina Always Knew Where The Big Ideas Were”

Harvard economist Alberto Alesina passed away at 63. Paola Giuliano, UCLA professor and Alesina's co-author, recalls his intellectual and human legacy: "He...

Why Economic Predictions Are Useless Right Now

The Covid-19 crisis is unprecedented in its global scope and open-ended, uncontrollable progress. By their very nature, the models that economists often...

How Political Conflict Shapes Macroeconomics: Alberto Alesina’s Intellectual Legacy

One of the most respected economists of his generation, Harvard professor Alberto Alesina suddenly died at 63. His friend and colleague Guido...

“We’ve Never Had a Purely Capitalist Economy—We’ve Had State-Subsidies for Some and Exclusion for Others”

In an interview with ProMarket, UC Irvine law professor Mehrsa Baradaran discussed the connection between the current protest wave and the deep-seated...