One striking feature of many underdeveloped societies is that economic power is concentrated in the hands of very small powerful elites. Why is it the case that some elites show remarkable persistence and even retain their power after major economic disruptions, like civil wars or democratization? The fortune of wealthy white southern households and their sons after the American Civil War is one such case in point.
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How does the revolving door between Congress and corporate America affect the enforcement of tax policy? A new study examines how tax rates change when firms hire former members of Congress, finding that companies’ tax bills and the probability of being audited decrease markedly when they hire a former legislator.
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Digital platforms present an enforcement challenge sufficiently daunting that it requires major reforms to antitrust law. But in order to restore lost competition, we need more than antitrust reform; we need better regulators. And for both, we need Congress to act.
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At the Stigler Center’s annual competition conference, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called for the unwinding of Facebook’s WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions and the creation of a new regulatory agency to oversee digital platforms.
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The four reports that will be presented at the Stigler Center’s Digital Platforms, Markets and Democracy conference offer a compelling case for regulatory action and a very powerful array of solutions.
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Americans used to have a relatively egalitarian view of markets. How did they come to accept extreme inequality as an innate part of their economic system? At the heart of this change is a radical shift in the meaning of American capitalism itself.
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While some markets may self-correct, rapid self-correction in markets dominated by large digital platforms is unlikely. The economy and market structure subcommittee of the Stigler Center’s Digital Platforms Project proposes ways to reform antitrust law and regulation in order to adequately deliver competition to consumers.
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The idiosyncrasies of the American approach to regulation have left the world’s largest economy ill-equipped to protect consumers and guide firms when it comes to policy issues surrounding digital platforms. The privacy and data protection subcommittee of the Stigler Center’s Digital Platforms Project proposes three complementary approaches to protecting privacy and security interests.
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Digital platforms present a new formidable threat to the news media that market forces will not correct if left to their own devices. The media subcommittee of the Stigler Center’s Digital Platforms Project proposes ways to strengthen independent, strong, and rigorous accountability journalism.
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Ahead of its annual conference on Digital Platforms, Markets and Democracy, the Stigler Center formed a committee to produce independent white papers that will inform policymakers on how to address the political and economic issues raised by tech platforms. In preparation for the conference, we are publishing the executive summary of each preliminary report.
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Big tech firms have been active in Washington since the early days of the Microsoft antitrust case, but in recent years they have increased their political spending, allowing us to get a sense of the scope of their influence.
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Weakening competition policy in Europe risks creating monopolies rather than industrial champions.
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