ProMarket‘s home institution, the Stigler Center, is repromulgating its disclosure policy ahead of its 2025 Antitrust and Competition Policy Conference this Thursday and Friday. You can register to attend the livestream of the conference here.
The Stigler Center wants to reiterate its disclosure policy ahead of its annual antitrust and competition conference to accommodate the antitrust community’s increasing commitment to stronger disclosures of potential conflicts of interest.
Conversations about how potential conflicts of interest can influence scholarship and policymaking have become more frequent among the antitrust community, particularly over the last year. In September, former Assistant Attorney General for the Division of Antitrust Jonathan Kanter discussed what he saw to be the harmful effects of an increasing breakdown between academia and advocacy. Aviv Nevo, the former director of the Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Economics, made similar remarks in November.
Recent scholarship has further clarified the mechanisms by which conflicts of interest can influence academic output. One paper co-authored by several Stigler Center-affiliated scholars and researchers, including ProMarket and Stigler Center faculty director Luigi Zingales, discussed how conflicts of interest impact the trustworthiness of economics research. Another paper by Ioannis Lianos focused specifically on the hidden costs of corporate funding of antitrust scholarship and other interactions between academia and industry. In March, the Stigler Center, together with other academic institutions, co-organized a conference in Brussels to discuss how corporate relationships impact antitrust scholarship. The OECD competition committee will host a roundtable on the topic in June.
Concurrent with Nevo’s remarks last November, the FTC Bureau of Economics amended its disclosure policy to ask all speakers participating in its events to provide their disclosures of potential conflicts of interest upon delivering their initial remarks. The FTC policy builds upon the disclosures required by the American Economics Association (AEA), and they are aligned with the ethical guidelines published by Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA).
The Stigler Center’s disclosure policy likewise observes the requirements of the AEA. Following the FTC, the Stigler Center will also encourage all speakers participating in its Antitrust and Competition conference, as well as at all future Stigler Center events, to briefly disclose any potential conflicts of interest before making their first statement.
The Stigler Center’s disclosure policy, which has not changed but now adopts some of the wording from the new FTC policy, is below.
Participants are encouraged to disclose:
- Any significant support the speaker received over the past three years from any “interested party.” Significant support includes financial support (USD 10k or more) and privileged access to data. As defined by the FTC, an “interested party is any individual, group, or organization that has a financial, ideological, or political stake in the topic(s) related to [the speaker] participation in the event. This should include any support received both directly and indirectly, including funding for centers and institutes that are material benefit to the author(s).”
- Any paid or unpaid positions as an officer, director, or board member of any organization whose policy positions, goals, or financial interests relate to the topics associated with their participation in the event.
- The disclosure should be specific and, to the extent possible, cite the specific parties that provided significant support. For example, if the speaker worked for clients with a stake in the matter, the speaker should name the clients. If the speaker’s center or organization received significant funding from an interested party, the party should be named. If the speaker cannot name the client/party because of a confidentiality agreement, the speaker should state the nature of the support, mention the confidentiality agreement, and then provide as much public information as possible.
- If a third party had the right to review the speaker’s remarks.
- If the speaker’s spouse or partner has any such conflicts.
- If the speaker has no conflicts of interest, the speaker should say that they have no conflicts to disclose.
In turn, the Stigler Center discloses that its conference is directly funded by the Stigler Center, which is itself predominantly funded by an endowment from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The Center also received a grant of USD 10k from the Knight Foundation to support the Conference.
Articles represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty.
