Culture & Society

Reed Showalter argues that the suggestion that antitrust can be ringfenced from democracy or the democratic process is erroneous. Antitrust is fundamentally a body...

Yunsieg P. Kim argues that economic regulation, including antitrust, can only be democratic if it is the choice of well-informed citizens. This article is part...

Erik Peinert explores the paradoxical relationship between economic concentration and democracy, where economic concentration compromises the democratic process and democratic backsliding also gains momentum by taking advantage of concentrated market actors, whose political power is now impotent, to capture civil society.

Gerhard Schick discusses the CumEx and CumCum share-trading scandals that cost German taxpayers billions of euros over the course of several decades and the failures in political and social institutions that allowed these scandals to persist for so long.

In new research, Kenneth Coriale, Ethan Kaplan, and Daniel Kolliner show how the Republican Party has benefited more from redistricting and gerrymandering. Their research has important implications for political power and representation in today’s era of razor-thin Congressional majorities.

In new research, Claire Liu and Jared Stanfield examine how relationships between corporate leaders and the United States president enable firms to capture regulation and avoid antitrust scrutiny.

Stigler Center Assistant Director Matt Lucky reviews Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan’s recent book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing). The book presents an optimistic vision for the educational and pedagogical role of AI-assisted chatbots as personal tutors and teaching assistants. Khan discusses his book with Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales on this week’s Capitalisn’t episode, which you can listen to here.

As private corporations gain unprecedented control over public data, Americans are losing access to the information that underpins democracy and critical aspects of their lives. D. Victoria Baranetsky argues that this rise of secrecy—driven by the rising value of data and government privatization—demands not just transparency, but a bold commitment to anti-secrecy as essential to democratic governance.

Fifteen years after Citizens United opened elections to corporate campaign financing, Jacob Eisler asks if the ruling remains relevant after Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024 through small donations and social media savvy rather than traditional reliance on kingmaking donors.

Caio Mario S. Pereira Neto reflects on the discussions at the Stigler Center’s 2025 Antitrust and Competition Conference and addresses the problems that confront Brazil’s courts as they navigate the tradeoffs between removing disinformation that threatens electoral integrity and observing constitutional protections for freedom of expression.