The average share of votes in favor of proposals that require corporate executives to disclose political and lobbying spending is trending up. But a new SEC regulation will make it harder to resubmit blocked proposals.
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“The Lack of Competition Has Deprived American Workers of $1.25 Trillion of Income”
French economist Thomas Philippon, author of the recent The Great Reversal, explains how Europe got to be better at free markets than the US and how much rising concentration is costing American consumers and workers.
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Uber’s “Academic Research” Program: How to Use Famous Economists to Spread Corporate Narratives
Uber’s employees co-authored academic papers with brand name scholars that were then used to back the company’s PR and lobbying strategy. Published in respected journals, those articles are based on proprietary data and non-replicable analysis. Moreover, they all don’t discuss the subsidies that make it possible for Uber to pursue market dominance despite its endless losses.
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The Qualcomm Case: Why Protecting American Tech Monopolies Is a Big Favor to China
The FTC sued the company that monopolized the market of components for cell phones with its aggressive patent policy. However, in the technological race against China, the US should prefer to let competition drive innovation rather than support exclusive national champions.
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False Claims and Propaganda: Why Uber’s Narratives Are Wrong But Successful
Uber’s narratives reduce everything to emotive battles between good and evil. If Uber’s success is inevitable, and resistance is futile, no one needs to waste time examining any actual economic or financial data.
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Why Michael Bloomberg’s Run for President Creates an Unprecedented Media Problem
The first effect of Michael Bloomberg’s campaign and of his conflicts of interest is to reduce the 2020 candidates’ accountability: one of the world’s largest media corporations will stop investigating presidential candidates.
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Benjamin Netanyahu Sided With Israel’s Oligarchs — and It Led to His Downfall
The indictment against Israel’s prime minister exposes an entire ecosystem of institutionalized corruption, one which has been in place long before Netanyahu came to power.
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The SEC Proposal on Proxy Advisory Firms Will Provide Greater Transparency and Accountability
Proxy advisory firms lack transparency and their recommendations are not always in shareholders’ interests. However, despite their poor performance, the two biggest firms’ market dominance has never been challenged. This is a market failure that warrants a change in regulation, Professors Steven N. Kaplan and David F. Larcker argue.
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Why CEOs and Regulators Clash With the Duopoly of Proxy Advisory Firms
Institutional investors that own between 70 and 80 percent of the market value of US public companies often rely on investment advisers voting on behalf of clients. The SEC and corporate executives are willing to curb the power of the two largest proxy advisory companies, ISS and Glass Lewis. In a new episode of their podcast Capitalisn’t, Kate Waldock and Luigi Zingales discuss the new proposed regulation with SEC commissioner Robert Jackson.
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The Uber Bubble: Why Is a Company That Lost $20 Billion Claimed to Be Successful?
In the first of three interrelated articles, transportation consultant Hubert Horan discusses Uber’s “uncompetitive economics.” There is no real innovation in the company’s business model, he argues. Its market share is the product of predatory pricing and gigantic subsidies, not of higher productivity.
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Fake Letters Poisoned the Debate on SEC’s New Rules on Shareholder Votes and Proxy Advisory Firms
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton claimed that the draft regulation on shareholders’ votes and proxy advisory firms received approval by hundreds of “Main Street” Americans. A Bloomberg investigation reveals that many of the letters that the SEC published on its website are fake. This reform could change American capitalism. We deserve more serious debate.
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High-Priced Acquisitions of Tech Startups Do Not Always Stimulate More Innovation
What seems to be a big reward to innovation ultimately reduces the incentive to innovate, argues a new Stigler Center working paper by Krishna Kamepalli, Raghuram Rajan, and Luigi Zingales. Their analysis of Google and Facebook’s acquisitions shows that “It is dangerous to apply twentieth-century economic intuitions to twenty-first-century economic problems.”
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