Uber’s employees co-authored academic papers with brand name scholars that were then used to back the company’s PR and lobbying strategy. Published in respected journals, those articles are based on proprietary data and non-replicable analysis. Moreover, they all don’t discuss the subsidies that make it possible for Uber to pursue market dominance despite its endless losses.
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The FTC sued the company that monopolized the market of components for cell phones with its aggressive patent policy. However, in the technological race against China, the US should prefer to let competition drive innovation rather than support exclusive national champions.
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Much of the discussion on populism focuses exclusively on protest against the political system: the protest of “the people” against “the elite.” But elites are using nativism to redirect “the people’s” anger toward immigrants and minorities. In his new book, University of Georgia professor Cas Mudde assesses the influence of the far-right today.
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Uber’s narratives reduce everything to emotive battles between good and evil. If Uber’s success is inevitable, and resistance is futile, no one needs to waste time examining any actual economic or financial data.
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The first effect of Michael Bloomberg’s campaign and of his conflicts of interest is to reduce the 2020 candidates’ accountability: one of the world’s largest media corporations will stop investigating presidential candidates.
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The indictment against Israel’s prime minister exposes an entire ecosystem of institutionalized corruption, one which has been in place long before Netanyahu came to power.
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Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
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Proxy advisory firms lack transparency and their recommendations are not always in shareholders’ interests. However, despite their poor performance, the two biggest firms’ market dominance has never been challenged. This is a market failure that warrants a change in regulation, Professors Steven N. Kaplan and David F. Larcker argue.
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Institutional investors that own between 70 and 80 percent of the market value of US public companies often rely on investment advisers voting on behalf of clients. The SEC and corporate executives are willing to curb the power of the two largest proxy advisory companies, ISS and Glass Lewis. In a new episode of their podcast Capitalisn’t, Kate Waldock and Luigi Zingales discuss the new proposed regulation with SEC commissioner Robert Jackson.
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In the first of three interrelated articles, transportation consultant Hubert Horan discusses Uber’s “uncompetitive economics.” There is no real innovation in the company’s business model, he argues. Its market share is the product of predatory pricing and gigantic subsidies, not of higher productivity.
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SEC Chairman Jay Clayton claimed that the draft regulation on shareholders’ votes and proxy advisory firms received approval by hundreds of “Main Street” Americans. A Bloomberg investigation reveals that many of the letters that the SEC published on its website are fake. This reform could change American capitalism. We deserve more serious debate.
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While conventional indicators show a significant decline in inequality, the perception among Chile’s citizens is that inequality has greatly increased. The development model Chile followed since the 1980s was successful in generating growth and reducing poverty. But it did not function properly in a middle-income country.
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