Regulation

In new research, Eric Dunaway, Ana Espinola-Arredondo, and Felix Munoz-Garcia examine the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) as a tool for merger review and show where it diverges from the consumer-surplus and total-welfare standards. In particular, the HHI fails to account for potential efficiency gains.

In new research, Renuka Diwan, Paul Eliason, Riley League, Ryan C. McDevitt, James W. Roberts, and Jetson Leder-Luis investigate how Medicare’s shift to a competitive bidding system to reduce prices has inadvertently shifted market share to fraudulent suppliers.

Julia Cagé, Caroline Le Pennec, and Elisa Mougin discuss their recent research on France’s 1995 ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns. The ban pushed candidates to de-emphasize local politics in favor of national issues and, in many cases, adopt more extreme rhetoric.

In a forthcoming paper in the Yale Journal on Regulation, Stefan Bechtold, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci, Edoardo Martino, and Gideon Parchomovsky examine how smart contracts are transforming financial contracting by creating enforceable rights that bind third parties without the legal formalities property law has always required. This “property without law” phenomenon enhances financial efficiency while exposing the public to systemic risks beyond the reach of existing regulation.

In new research, Jack Kappelman and Haotian Chen investigate how mass violence impacts legislative voting on firearm-related bills. They conclude that on average, state...

Congressional attempts to ban cryptocurrency platforms from providing yield, or interest, on stablecoin holdings have so far failed, and will likely continue to fail, as long as they run up against economic logic, writes David Krause.

In new research, Ben Bates examines the recent wave of funds designed to open private markets to retail investors. Such funds both underreport volatility and perform worse than comparable funds aimed at wealthier investors.

The EU’s proposed Digital Omnibus to simplify digital regulation suggests repealing the 2019 Platform-to-Business Regulation. This poses a problem for the Digital Markets Act, which relies on the P2B-Regulation for how to define core platform services like search engines. Moving forward with the repeal will require legislators to renegotiate first the DMA, which is necessary anyways to adapt the law to the age of artificial intelligence, writes Jan-Frederick Göhsl.

Recent border carbon measures have relied on the theory that stricter environmental rules in rich countries push pollution-intensive production toward developing economies with weaker regulations. In new research, Irfan Saleem and Giray Gozgor show that the “pollution haven” mechanism is neither automatic nor uniform across industries. Evidence is mixed, often small in magnitude, and highly sensitive to how we measure regulation, model trade, and account for industry mobility.

Matt Lucky reviews Jonathan D. Cohen’s new book, Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling.