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Cristina Caffarra

The New Geoeconomics of Hard Power Requires New Tools. Will Europe Update?

Europe is acutely aware it has fallen behind competitively, but it is struggling to find a way to recover lost ground. Cristina Caffarra writes that Europe did not find any inspiration in the American anti-monopoly movement, which underpinned the whole-of-government approach of the Biden administration. It is also faltering in developing a response to the vigorous array of tools deployed by the Trump administration to assert power at home and on the world stage. It does not need to be this way, as Europe has tremendous assets and capabilities. But it needs investment and leadership, boldness and experimentation in vision and policy design. Policymakers are beginning to see the urgency, but there is still too much narrow defensive posture by regulators sticking to their patch.

COMMENTARY

A Pro-Market Framework for Driving Decarbonization: Part II

Karthik Ramanna
Corporate decarbonization policy has stagnated under ideological divisions. Arguing that anthropogenic emissions are driven by customer preferences and that such preferences can shift with improved information, Karthik Ramanna advocates for a new approach: an economy-wide system of reliable and comparable accounts of the embedded emissions in products to allow customers (and investors) to make more-informed decisions aligned with underlying preferences. In part II of his two-part series (read part I here), Ramanna explores the principles of an accounting methodology to provide better greenhouse gas emissions data to business customers and consumers and the reasons why, based on historical precedent, such a system is readily adoptable and likely to prove effective. 

RESEARCH

Fair and Efficient Data-Sharing From Google Requires a More Advanced Regulatory Approach

Giovanna Massarotto
Drawing on her working paper, Giovanna Massarotto discusses three algorithmic approaches to how Google can fairly and efficiently share its data with rivals per the requirements of a court’s mandated remedy for illegally monopolizing the online search market.
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Antitrust and Competition

The Political Instrumentalization of Competition and Antitrust Enforcement

Ariel Ezrachi
Ariel Ezrachi warns about the rising trend of political instrumentalization of antitrust and competition enforcement and its consequences.
Commentary

A Pro-Market Framework for Driving Decarbonization: Part I

Karthik Ramanna
Corporate decarbonization policy has stagnated under ideological divisions. Arguing that anthropogenic emissions are driven by customer preferences and that such preferences can shift with improved information, Karthik Ramanna advocates for a new approach: an economy-wide system of reliable and comparable accounts of the embedded emissions in products to allow customers (and investors) to make better-informed decisions aligned with underlying preferences. In the first of two articles, Ramanna discusses why top-down regulatory approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have failed to generate decarbonization at meaningful scales and the virtues of a pro-market approach to incentivizing and enabling greener corporate and consumer behavior.
Antitrust and Competition

Resisting the Politicization of Antitrust and Regulation

Diana L. Moss
Diana L. Moss reviews the increasing politicization of antitrust and regulation in the United States and what avenues are available to resist the corruption of due process and usurpation of the rule of law.
Fiscal Policy

Market Power Shifts Tariff Costs to Suppliers

Vanessa Alviarez, Michele Fioretti, Ayumu Ken Kikkawa and Monica Morlacco
Many studies have assumed that United States tariff costs are passed onto consumers. In new research, Vanessa Alviarez, Michele Fioretti, Ken Kikkawa, and Monica Morlacco argue that buyer-seller relationship dynamics allow dominant U.S. importers to instead force higher costs onto exporters.
Commentary

How the Law Protects and Promotes Corporate Misconduct

Jennifer Taub
Corporate crimes like fraud continue unabated in the United States. Jennifer Taub defines a chief reason as “accountability theater,” or the propensity of government prosecutors to pursue out-of-court civil settlements rather than criminal trials that, though they might lose them, would publicize the extent of corporate misconduct and better deter future abuse.
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READING LISTS

Health Care

Americans spend significantly more on health care than any other country. Why? Answers to this question range from hospital monopolies to perverse incentives to opaque pricing to medical licensing to pharmaceutical firms abusing IP practices to “creeping consolidation.” Why is the US health care system so broken? And what can antirust do about it? Catch-up on our coverage of antitrust and the US health care system.

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Commentary

Will Trump’s Drug-Pricing Order Reduce Prices for Americans?

Margherita Colangelo
President Donald Trump has, across two administrations, sought to lower drug prices for Americans, most recently with executive order “Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients.” Margherita Colangelo explains why his order is unlikely to accomplish its goal.
Antitrust and Competition

Is Competition Law Making Us Sick?

Benjamin Wood, Sven Gallasch, Nicholas Shaxson, Katherine Sievert and Gary Sacks
In new research, Benjamin Wood, Sven Gallasch, Nicholas Shaxson, Katherine Sievert, and Gary Sacks write that competition underenforcement and a narrow regulatory focus on prices and output has allowed industries that produce harmful consumer products, such as tobacco or ultra-processed foods, to increase demand and, consequentially, harm to society. They argue that competition law must evolve to consider health impacts.
Antitrust and Competition

Is Private Equity’s Involvement in Healthcare Really Harmful?

Anthony LoSasso, Ge Bai and Lawton Robert Burns
Anthony T. LoSasso, Ge Bai, and Lawton Robert Burns argue that critics of private equity’s involvement in healthcare ignore that it is often the only financial lifeline available to distressed healthcare providers and can introduce an improvement in outcomes, including quality of care.
Antitrust and Competition

How Private Equity Hurts the Healthcare Workforce

Theodosia Stavroulaki
Theodosia Stavroulaki reviews how the involvement of private equity in American healthcare leads to, among other negative outcomes, burnout and stress among healthcare workers, particularly physicians. She writes that the consequences could cripple America’s healthcare system.

George J. Stigler, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1982 “for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets, and causes and effects of public regulation.” His research upended the idea that government regulation was effective at correcting private-market failures. Stigler introduced the idea of regulatory capture, in which regulators could be dominated by special interests. These regulators would work for the benefit of large, monied organizations rather than the public good. Catch up on ProMarket's coverage of his legacy.

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Commentary

A Voluntary AI Rating System Can Balance Innovation and Consumer Protection

Kevin Frazier
States are beginning to impose idiosyncratic rules on artificial intelligence chatbots and other offerings in response to harms to consumers. Rather than create a...
Commentary

The Challenge of Accountability Under US Business Law

Elizabeth Pollman
Elizabeth Pollman reviews barriers for holding corporations and their fiduciaries accountable under corporate and securities law.
Antitrust and Competition

Will GenAI Break Google’s Dominance in Search?

Mihir Kshirsagar
Judge Amit Mehta shaped his remedies in the Google Search case on the assumption that startups developing generative artificial intelligence models can restore competition in internet search. Mihir Kshirsagar analyzes the barriers to entry these startups face—scale, distribution, defaults, data and integration advantages, and content access—to show how Big Tech is still in control of the future of the search industry.
Antitrust and Competition

“Conservative” Antitrust: Something Possibly Kind of New Under the Sun, Maybe

Chris Sagers
Chris Sagers suggests that something significant could be happening in antitrust, though it probably remains academic for now, and it is hidden behind political messaging that in recent times has gotten most of the attention. He argues that the populist or politicizing talk of antitrust leaders during both the present administration and the last one has grown more detached from real-world administration. But he argues that there may be real change going on behind the scenes, as expressed in positions among some conservatives and Republican office-holders. He argues that the libertarian orthodoxy of the Chicago School no longer defines “conservative” antitrust, and that the range of plausible disagreement may genuinely be changing.

What Is the Role of Economics in Conservative Antitrust?

Aviv Nevo
The policies of conservative antitrust laid out by the new antitrust enforcers suggest a continued focus on the welfare of consumers and workers. This suggests a continued role for economics in shaping and advancing antitrust policy. However, Aviv Nevo writes, it is not clear from the actual actions taken by the antitrust agencies that economics, rather than political considerations, will be guiding antitrust policy.

The New Conservative Antitrust Is Not Here To Last

Gus Hurwitz
Gus Hurwitz explores the tenets of conservative antitrust under the second Trump administration and why it is unlikely to establish a lasting influence.

New Right vs. Conservative Antitrust

Thomas A. Lambert
Thomas A. Lambert argues that the conservative antitrust program articulated by the antitrust enforcers of the Second Trump administration hardly resembles the conservative antitrust of previous decades. Its divergences will likely end up harming consumers.

COLUMNS

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The publication of the Stigler Center at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

ProMarket is dedicated to discussing how competition tends to be subverted by special interests. The posts represent the opinions of their writers, not necessarily those of the University of Chicago, the Booth School of Business, or its faculty. For more information, please visit ProMarket Policy.