Columbia professor Suresh Naidu on Economics for Inclusive Prosperity, the new initiative he launched with Dani Rodrik and Gabriel Zucman, and why he believes economics shouldn’t be conflated with neoliberalism.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (December 9-16)
Congress misses an opportunity to scrutinize Google; the IRS is on life support; Johnson & Johnson reportedly knew for decades that its baby powder contained asbestos; the British Labour Party considers a break-up of the Big Four accounting firms; and will Obamacare once again be upheld by the Supreme Court?
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“US Regulators Have Essentially Become Do-Nothing Institutions”
In an interview with ProMarket, Jonathan Tepper talks about the rise of America’s oligopoly problem, why he believes antimonopoly is not a left-right issue, and how a passionate fan of free markets came to write a book titled “The Myth of Capitalism.”
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Mercenary Science: How Corporate Partnerships Can Corrupt Public Universities
UC Berkeley’s disastrous partnerships with Novartis and BP are cautionary examples of all that could go wrong when public universities allow private interests to lease vast swaths of their campus for years at a time.
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Pursuers of Truth or Peddlers of Influence?
Academic capture by donors threatens norms of independence and integrity at institutions of higher education, argue faculty members from Saint Louis University.
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When It Comes to Gender Imbalances, Academia’s Ignorance Is Self-Serving
The Ravina vs. Columbia case illustrates that challenging the status quo can be immensely costly. We economists should collectively think about how we can further both human dignity and science by becoming better scientists in life, not just on paper, argues Renée Adams in this op-ed.
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Why Every Good Economist Should Be Feminist
As every good economist knows, markets work best when they are competitive. Therefore, every good economist should also be a feminist, defending a level playing field for all genders, writes Luigi Zingales in this op-ed.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (July 21–27)
The rumors of Facebook’s newfound vulnerability have been greatly exaggerated; Google reportedly employs more contractors than actual employees; Britain has a monopoly problem; and can consumers resist companies’ market power?
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On Science Advancing One Funeral at a Time
Do star scientists erect barriers to entry for newcomers in their fields? Pierre Azoulay and Joshua Graff Zivin bring some data to the question raised in that famous quip from physicist Max Planck on how scientific progress really happens.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (May 26–June 2)
Google gives up Project Maven following “terrible” backlash; angry Facebook shareholders demand an end to Mark Zuckerberg’s “dictatorship”; American startups are in a 13-year slump; and Italy has a new government.
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The Other World Bank Scandal: A New Study Documents How Corporate Collusion Hurts the Bank’s Credibility—and Harms Sustainable Development
While the World Bank scrambles to contain the Doing Business rankings firestorm, a new paper by Rabia Malik and Randall Stone traces a more insidious source of partiality in how the Bank does development work.
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Have Business Schools Lost Their Way? Duff McDonald Talks HBS and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite
Harvard Business School is the largest business school in the world, but is it fulfilling its founding mission of educating businesspeople who “handle their current business problems in socially constructive ways”? Duff McDonald, author of the recent The Golden Passport, speaks to ProMarket about whether business schools should incorporate ethics into their teaching and how he went about writing a book about HBS despite being denied access to HBS faculty.
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