In new research examining 44 million U.S. mortgages and nearly 5,000 bank mergers over three decades, Celso Brunetti, Jeffrey H. Harris, and Ioannis Spyridopoulos find that bank consolidation does not raise mortgage rates, restrict credit access, or degrade loan quality. Local mortgage markets remain intensely competitive. 

The European Union’s draft Merger Guidelines give a central role to dynamic competition in merger review. Some scholars have criticized dynamic competition as an analytical tool that seems to always discourage government intervention, given how quickly and unexpectedly—or dynamically—innovation can remake a market. Nicolas Petit, Selcukhan Unekbas, Bowman Heiden, and Pierre Regibeau argue this critique ignores the several large cases in which regulators used dynamic competition to intervene in a merger.

California’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires will struggle to accurately value and tax the wealth of California’s richest. Rather than fund the state’s massive budgetary commitments, the bill may drive away its largest taxpayers, write Ray Ball and Andrew Sutherland.

The United States healthcare system has experienced an expansion of private equity ownership. In new research, Theodosia Stavroulaki argues that private equity acquisitions risk harming healthcare by increasing prices, reducing quality of care, limiting access to care, and hurting the labor force.

Public investors poured funds into buying SpaceX shares upon its mid-June IPO, and they can be expected to continue to do so heavily over...

The draft EU Merger Guidelines open merger analysis to non-economic considerations, including choice, supply chain resilience, and sustainability. However, they do not yet explain how these considerations will be paired with a traditional consumer welfare analysis of price and quantity. Maciej Bernatt and Simbarashe Tavuyanago look to South Africa to devise a “vulnerable consumer test” that can help bridge these economic and non-economic goals.