Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
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How to Change Section 230 and Make Digital Platforms More Accountable
If elected, former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to “revoke immediately” the 1996 provision that gave tech companies like Facebook protection from civil liability for harmful or misleading content published on their platforms. The Stigler Center Committee on Digital Platforms has a proposal to fix the problem.
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Over 60 Leading Finance Economists Ask SEC to Revise the Shareholder Voting Draft Reform
The new regulation that Security and Exchange Commissioners voted in November doesn’t fix proxy advisory industry duopoly problems, but it actually makes them worse: A group of scholars from major American universities filed a comment to ask the SEC to amend the proposed reform of public companies corporate governance.
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New Rules on Shareholder Voting Debate: Best Readers’ Comment
The draft SEC regulation on shareholder proposal and proxy advisory firms will curb the initiative of individual shareholders to improve corporate governance and transparency of public firms, a ProMarket reader writes in the comment he sent to the SEC. “Progress on best practices often depends on the initiative of a few.”
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The Epstein Report: How a Convicted Criminal Could Use MIT to Whitewash His Reputation
The only reason why a pedophile’s donations did not violate any MIT policy is that MIT does not have any policy to prevent embarrassing donors damaging the institution’s reputation. An independent investigation proved that many MIT executives were aware of Epstein’s gifts but they pretend they never checked Google or Wikipedia to get some information on his past. Two senior professors who helped Epstein to connect with MIT received money on their personal accounts or ventures.
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Corporations and the Rise of the Chicago Law and Economics Movement
From its birth in 1946 onward, corporations made possible and crucially supported the rise of the Chicago law and economics movement. Aaron Director, who at one point had advocated for curbing corporate power and vigorously enforcing antitrust law, spearheaded the effort to create a “new liberalism.”
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Should We Let Facebook Decide the Next President of the United States?
Facebook admitted that only a binding regulation on political ads could prevent private corporations from influencing the outcome of US presidential elections. Without such regulation, digital platforms can favor a candidate by altering (or maintaining) their policies on digital advertising. Trump’s campaign was much more effective than Clinton’s in using micro-targeting to shape voters’ preferences in 2016, a new study shows. Facebook decided to confirm the same policies for the 2020 election.
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Announcing the Participants in the 2020 Stigler Center Journalists in Residence Program
In March, the Stigler Center will welcome nine world-class journalists from the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Romania, Ukraine, Slovenia, and the United States for an intensive 12-week program of professional development at Chicago Booth.
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Bethany McLean’s Weekend Reading List: TikTok Deepfakes, Online Advertising, and the US-China Standoff
Corruption, lobbying, corporate malfeasance, and frauds: a weekly unconventional selection of must-read articles by investigative journalist Bethany McLean.
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Why the US Government Buys Overpriced Services From McKinsey
The Industrial Funding Fee pays $3 million a year for a 23-year old McKinsey employee instead of hiring an experienced person directly to do IT management. The government agency in charge of bulk buying isn’t paid for saving money, but for spending too much of it.
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The Rise of the Opioids: How Purdue Invented New Markets for OxyContin
Purdue’s strategy was to market its opioids directly to patients via brochures, videos, advertisements, and the internet. It also provided information to doctors and consumers through an apparently independent entity called “Partners Against Pain,” but ultimately controlled by the company itself.
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Who Benefits When State Governments Award Incentives to Politically-Connected Companies?
A new study finds that a company is nearly four times more likely to receive an economic incentive in a state where the company makes political contributions to state-level candidates. The results also show that awarding economic incentives to politically-connected firms is not the most effective use of taxpayer funds.
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