Robert Van Horn
Robert Van Horn is an associate Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island. His research interests include: 1) the life and work of Aaron Director (a renowned Chicago economist who is considered the father of Chicago Law and Economics); 2) the role that business has played in the development of economics; 3) the history Chicago law and economics and neoliberalism; 4) best practices in teaching the history of economics; 5) the intellectual contributions of Milton Friedman; and 6) Nonviolence and economics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame, was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy, and has been a visiting professor at Brown University’s Economics Department. Before coming to URI, he taught at Holy Cross College and University of Notre Dame.
Aaron Director
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,...
Latest news
News
President-Elect Joe Biden and the Real Lessons of DuPont
Simply talking corporate America into being more responsible is not enough. It may get corporations to talk the talk, but not to...
Corporate Governance
How Companies Spin Off Environmental Liabilities to Avoid Legal Obligations
Environmental externalities are vexing for corporate decision makers, but some companies have figured out a way to deal with them: a spinoff....
Coronavirus
How Pfizer’s Vaccine Announcement Demonstrates the Political Power of Firms
By timing the disclosure of the results of its vaccine trial, Pfizer could have influenced the 2020 presidential election. This is worrisome...
Antitrust and Competition
The Useful Distraction of Section 230
How the red-herring of a politicized Section 230 and “conservative censorship” distracts from a bipartisan national privacy act.
Antitrust and Competition
Institution Man: How Corporations Came to Dominate the US Economy
In the first chapter of his book Transaction Man, Nicholas Lemann explores how Adolf Berle, author of The Modern Corporation and Private...
Antitrust and Competition
Kicking Around Section 230: Don’t Confuse Politics and Policymaking
Congressional hearings may make for good TV and viral social media posts, but reforming Section 230 would be more difficult than it...
Antitrust and Competition
Big Tech Platforms and Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction
Schumpeter’s indirect entry theory fits the average tendencies of competition in digital industries. When the model is added to standard assumptions and...
