A new Stigler Center case study chronicling the story of Chile’s first crowdfunding platform and its early regulatory challenges illustrates how financial regulations can be effectively used by incumbents to stifle competition.
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Study: Politicians Vote Against the Will of Their Constituents 35 Percent of the Time
New Stigler Center working paper: “To the extent that legislators represent majority opinion, it happens largely because legislators share the opinions of their constituents, not because legislators seek to reflect constituent opinion.”
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Will PwC Throw the Red Card on its Swiss Firm Over FIFA?
PwC took over as auditor of the corruption-plagued global football body last year, with the intention of reforming it. So how is it that PwC is now accused of allegedly covering up a misappropriation of funds by FIFA’s new secretary general?
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Is Direct Democracy Better Able to Withstand the Influence of Special Interests?
A new Stigler Center working paper looks into the effects of referendums and public initiatives on public policy and finds that direct democracy better represents the will of the majority, and therefore might also be better able to counteract the power of special interests over policymaking.
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The Value of Access: How Closeness to the Obama White House Benefited Companies
Between January 2009 and December 2015, White House officials met with corporate CEOs 2,286 times. A new study, to be presented at the upcoming Stigler Center conference on the political economy of finance, shows that access to the White House has several economic benefits.
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How the Global Audit Firms, Led by Deloitte, Are Using Their Lobbying Clout to Dilute Sarbanes-Oxley Reforms
A look at the Big Four’s congressional lobbying activity shows the auditors and their trade association taking advantage of the “Trump” window to roll back the 2002 reforms that changed their business.
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The Powerful Private Regulator and the Effects of Conflicts of Interest
A new study reveals both the potential biases in the proxy advisory industry and how a new entrant can help mitigate conflicts of interest.
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Wells Fargo and the Failure of Boards and Regulators
Two new reports concerning the Wells Fargo scandal suggest that the bank’s senior management, its board of directors, and the regulators all knew about the bank’s toxic practices, yet for years did nothing to stop them.
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Stigler Center Launches Case Study Series
On Thursday, the Stigler Center will launch the first in a series of business case studies that focus on the many ways special interest groups subvert competition.
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When We Are Less Interested in the Truth, Capture Thrives
The unprecedented divide between the way that Democrats and Republicans perceive the state of the economy may be linked to two important theories in economics and political science: Rational Ignorance and Rational Irrationality.
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I Was a Whistleblower. The Fed Is Not Doing Enough to Fix Wall Street’s Culture of Fear
Deutsche Bank whistleblower Eric Ben-Artzi, who publicly rejected a multimillion dollar award from the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer, writes about the failure of regulators to fix the culture that wreaked havoc on the financial system.
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Uber, the Mayor’s Private Email, and the Underground Lobbying Complex
The recent revelations regarding the interactions between Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Uber executive and Obama adviser David Plouffe suggest that the real action in the U.S. lobbying game takes place under the surface. The billions of dollars invested in lobbying every year, and the thousands of registered lobbyists, are only the tip of the influence-peddling iceberg.
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