type here...
Jack Kappelman and Haotian (Barney) Chen

Mass Shootings Do Not Change How US Politicians Vote on Gun Policy

In new research, Jack Kappelman and Haotian Chen investigate how mass violence impacts legislative voting on firearm-related bills. They conclude that on average, state representatives do not change how they vote on gun policy even when mass shootings occur in the very districts they represent. When an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022, the tragedy appeared to crack the Republican Party's united front on protecting gun rights. Two...

COMMENTARY

What 150 Years of the Telephone Teaches Us About Regulating Digital Communications

John Haigh, Nancy Rose and Jonathan Sallet
On the 150th anniversary of the first telephone call, John Haigh, Nancy Rose, and...

RESEARCH

When Governments Stop Publishing Notices in Newspapers, Does Anyone Notice?

Kimberlyn Munevar, Anya Nakhmurina and Delphine Samuels
In new research providing the first systematic evidence on public notices, Kimberlyn Munevar, Anya Nakhmurina, and Delphine Samuels examine how Florida's 2023 law allowing local governments to stop publishing public notices in newspapers has affected citizen engagement in local governance.
spot_img
spot_img

A New Capitalisn’t Episode

Subscribe to promarket newsletter

Join our email newsletter

LATEST

Book Excerpts

Why the World Economic Order Is Spiraling Into Disorder

Eswar S. Prasad
The following is an excerpt from “The Doom Loop: Why the World Economic Order Is Spiraling into Disorder" by Eswar Prasad," now out at Hachette Book Group.
Antitrust and Competition

Repealing P2B-Regulation as Part of Digital Omnibus Allows the EU To AI-Proof the DMA

Jan-Frederick Göhsl
The EU’s proposed Digital Omnibus to simplify digital regulation suggests repealing the 2019 Platform-to-Business Regulation. This poses a problem for the Digital Markets Act, which relies on the P2B-Regulation for how to define core platform services like search engines. Moving forward with the repeal will require legislators to renegotiate first the DMA, which is necessary anyways to adapt the law to the age of artificial intelligence, writes Jan-Frederick Göhsl.
Commentary

Trump’s Attack on Capitalism

Luigi Zingales
The Trump administration’s blacklist of Anthropic represents its greatest attack on free markets yet. America’s businesses must push back, writes Luigi Zingales.
Fiscal Policy

How Federal Surveys Quietly Reshape Local Infrastructure Spending

Matthias Breuer and Qingkai Dong
In new research, Matthias Breuer and Qingkai Dong examine how federal data collection can influence local spending. They examine road surveys, showing that roads included in federal samples are more likely to be funded and those that are not often face funding and safety declines, reflecting a need for improved measurement systems.
Antitrust and Competition

The Jedi Blue Network Bidding Agreement Is Monopoly Maintenance

Joshua Gray
Previous plaintiffs have argued unsuccessfully that Google’s Jedi Blue agreement with Facebook is anticompetitive and illegal. The agreement grants Facebook preferential access to Google’s dominant digital advertisement system in exchange for not building competing technologies. The plaintiffs’ challenges to Jedi Blue would have been on stronger ground had they argued that Jedi Blue is compelling evidence of illegal monopoly maintenance, as occurred in Microsoft, writes Joshua B. Gray.
SHOW MORE

what we're reading

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.

Read the list
Discover all reading lists
Antitrust and Competition

Common Ownership May Reduce the Entry of Cheaper Generic Drugs

Martin Schmalz and Jin Xie
In new research, Martin Schmalz and Jin Xie examine how shareholder preferences influence the United States pharmaceutical industry. They find that generic-drug manufacturers sometimes harm their firms’ own value when doing so benefits shareholder portfolios, who frequently have stakes in competing brand-name firms.
Antitrust and Competition

Novo Nordisk’s Offer To Acquire Metsera Constitutes Attempted Monopolization

Hannah Pittock
Hannah Pittock uses weight-loss company Novo Nordisk’s offer to acquire Metsera to create a three-prong framework by which the antitrust agencies can identify when an invitation to exclude a rival from a market constitutes illegal exclusionary conduct under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Antitrust and Competition

Novo Nordisk’s Killer Non-Acquisition Merger Contract Proposal Is a Case of “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose”

Steven Salop
Steve Salop explores the anticompetitive innovation behind weight-loss giant Novo Nordisk’s offer to acquire Metsera. Novo’s proposed contract presents a new tactic by which firms with market power can preclude rival mergers that will lead to procompetitive entry.
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.

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.

Read the list
Discover all reading lists
Cultural Economics

How Diversity Shapes Cooperation After Natural Disasters

Pablo Balán, Agustín Vallejo and Pablo M. Pinto
In recent research, Pablo Balán, Agustín Vallejo, and Pablo M. Pinto examine how diversity affects cooperation between neighbors after a natural disaster. They find that more diverse neighborhoods were less likely to cooperate with each other on recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey.
Antitrust and Competition

Brazil Shows That Protecting Children and Digital Competition Are Complementary Efforts

Bruno Renzetti
Brazil’s new child protection law has gained less global press than its new digital competition bill. However, the two are complementary efforts that demonstrate how governments must rethink how different regulatory concerns and mandates blend into one another in the digital economy.
Antitrust and Competition

The Nexstar-Tegna Merger Will Raise Your Cable Bill, and Then Some

Diana L. Moss
The proposed merger of local broadcast television station owners Nexstar and Tegna will create a behemoth that threatens to raise consumer prices for multi-video programming subscriptions, increase advertising rates for local businesses, and reduce viewers’ exposure to diverse viewpoints. The government can and should block the merger but politics threatens to usurp law and economics, writes Diana L. Moss.
Antitrust and Competition

How To Link Competition Law With Democracy

Stavros Makris and Filip Lubinski
In the second of two articles, Stavros Makris and Filip Lubinski discuss how governments can reimagine competition policy to protect democracy and citizen welfare without abandoning traditional consumer welfare goals like innovation.

Has Competition Law Failed Democracy?

Stavros Makris and Filip Lubinski
In the first of two articles, Stavros Makris and Filip Lubinski discuss the connection between economic competition and democracy and how competition law allowed Big Tech to undermine both.

When Search Becomes Advice and Advice Raises Prices

Amit Zac and Michal Gal
In new experimental research, Amit Zac and Michal Gal find that users who use artificial intelligence chatbots to conduct online shopping are being directed to established brands at higher prices without a clear improvement in quality. The logic of AI algorithms risks consolidating markets around established firms while reducing consumer welfare for shoppers.

Concerns About Green Regulation Pushing Industry to Pollution Havens May Be Overstated

Irfan Saleem and Giray Gozgor
Recent border carbon measures have relied on the theory that stricter environmental rules in rich countries push pollution-intensive production toward developing economies with weaker regulations. In new research, Irfan Saleem and Giray Gozgor show that the “pollution haven” mechanism is neither automatic nor uniform across industries. Evidence is mixed, often small in magnitude, and highly sensitive to how we measure regulation, model trade, and account for industry mobility.

COLUMNS

spot_imgspot_img

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.