Academic Capture
“This Isn’t the Kind of Journalism That Serves Democracy Best”: How Place and Privilege Came to Define American News
In an interview with ProMarket, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Nikki Usher discusses how news in the US came to be produced and...
Iowa’s “Butter-Margarine War”: T. W. Schultz’s Fight for Academic Freedom
During the Second World War, economists at Iowa State College published a pamphlet titled “Putting Dairying on a War Footing,” which would later come...
Why Big Tech Companies Should Engage With Academia, and Why They Don’t
“Academic engagement” of a Big Tech firm: that job should exist. But it has not happened, and it probably won’t happen, unless we get...
Government Regulation is the Pro-Market Solution
The Covid-19 pandemic has utterly discredited the false dichotomy of government vs. markets. Extensive government regulation is a prerequisite for the proper functioning of...
“Doubt is Their Product”: The Difference Between Research and Academic Lobbying
Tommaso Valletti, the former Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission, reflects on the intersection of academic economics and policymaking and offers advice to...
Should We Leave Public Resource Allocation to the Experts? Glen Weyl Responds to Paul Milgrom
Glen Weyl, Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer Political Economist and Social Technologist, responds to Paul Milgrom’s criticisms of his recent ProMarket piece...
It Is Such a Small World: The Market-Design Academic Community Evolved in a Business Network
Private equity funds such as Michael Dell's MSD Capital made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the 2017 FCC spectrum auction, thanks...
Tainted Philanthropy in Higher Education
Our institutions of higher education should apply appropriate ethical and academic standards when considering financial donations; otherwise, they risk promoting the private interests of...
Are the Findings in Academic Economic Journals to be Trusted?
A growing number of studies provide evidence that editors (and referees) of academic journals often publish only findings showing a significant effect or surprising...
Capitalisn’t in a New Episode on the Gig Economy: A Reading List
Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Doordash have brought the term "gig economy" into our lexicon. But what is the gig economy, really? In the...
