The Role of the State

For its entire 15-year life as a regional bank, SVB held the same risky bet. The risks were visible the whole time, yet supervisors reacted only once losses had materialized. SVB's collapse is less a story of hidden danger than of a supervisory system that polices process rather than risk.

In new research, James Flynn, David Munro, and Caitlin Myers document how sexual behavior has changed in light of total abortion bans enacted after Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health. They find that abortion bans reduced sexual activity and increased contraceptive use, motivated by individuals having an increased awareness of state policy.

In new research, Raymond Fisman, Aron Malatinszky, and Eyüb Yegen find that states with higher levels of corruption are more likely to delay or reject requests for government data required by freedom of information laws in the leadup to elections.

A remedy of “Pay for Half” that limits the share of devices for which Google can pay for default search status, as well as the share of revenue Google can pay its channel parters for that status, offers a middle ground that would help restore competition while preserving revenue for distribution partners, argue Alissa Cooper, Fiona Scott Morton, and Nick Jacobson.

Although merger review now acknowledges potential harms to labor markets, the analytical tools remain underdeveloped. Shishene Jing proposes identifying “labor market mavericks” as companies essential to maintaining competition among employers and preventing mergers that could reduce wages and other worker benefits.

Chilean authorities are testing an unofficial “independence rule” that forbids digital platforms from exerting further influence over how business users set their own prices through most-favored-nation clauses. Manuel Abarca Meza assesses how this rule could potentially fit into antitrust case law and whether or not it effectively weighs the risks against market efficiencies.

The federal Buy Clean initiative illustrates how procurement quotas can alter market structure by raising compliance costs and rewarding scale. As states expand their own Buy Clean programs, competition effects deserve the same scrutiny as environmental ones, writes Francesca Chiaradia.

The global economy is in the early stages of a second China shock as the Chinese economy moves up the manufacturing value chain to produce advanced technology for export. China’s advantage lies in government subsidies and an artificially suppressed exchange rate. If advanced economies in the West are to avoid the repetition of job loss and continued trade deficits witnessed over the last two decades, or the pyrrhic policies like tariffs implemented to address these harms, they must pursue institutional change, writes Joshua Banerjee.

In new research, evidence from a land titling campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo shows that formal property rights can do more than secure land: they can give citizens an exit from costly informal obligations, writes Pablo Balán.

Responding to Mark Lemley and Jacob Noti-Victor, Shishene Jing argues that licensing deals struck by incumbent artificial intelligence firms with content owners will not disadvantage smaller AI rivals. Even if such deals establish a legal precedent requiring licenses, content owners have little incentive to actually sue small, cash-poor AI startups, making the precedent toothless in practice.