Following his ouster from New America, antitrust scholar Barry Lynn talks to ProMarket about academic capture and the power of digital platforms like Google.
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Study: Politically-Connected Firms More Likely to Receive Favorable Merger Reviews from Antitrust Regulators
A new study finds that firms connected to members of the House and Senate judiciary committees are more likely to receive favorable merger reviews.
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Raghuram Rajan: Populist Nationalism Is “the First Step Toward Crony Capitalism”
The former governor of the Reserve Bank of India discussed the “concentrated and devastating” impact that technology and trade had on blue-collar communities, the anger toward “totally discredited” elites following the 2008 financial crisis, and the subsequent rise of populist nationalism during a keynote address at the Stigler Center’s conference on the political economy of finance.
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Eliot Spitzer: The Democratic Party Has Become the Party of the Status Quo
Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer talks about antitrust, digital platforms, economic concentration, and regulatory capture. Part 2 of 2.
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The Rise of Market Power and the Decline of Labor’s Share
A new paper argues that the decline of the labor and capital shares, as well as the decline in low-skilled wages and other economic trends, have been aided by a significant increase in markups and market power.
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Eliot Spitzer: The U.S. Never Had the Will and the Ability to Hold the Most Powerful to Account
In a special interview with ProMarket, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer talks about financial regulation, regulatory capture, and antitrust. Part 1 of 2.
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How Markets in Europe Opened Up as Guild Monopolies Declined in the Sixteenth Century
Markets don’t function well if they are ridden with frictions like lack of information or lack of trust. A new working paper finds that cities in the sixteenth century where monopolies of densely networked merchant guilds declined had significantly higher levels of printing, as they were early adopters of printing technology. Additionally, these cities were found on the Atlantic coast, where traders had the greatest incentives to form new connections with unfamiliar traders.
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Big Four Audit Firms Enjoy a “Too Few to Fail” Regulatory Hall Pass
The failure of Enron and subsequent demise of Arthur Andersen led to significant changes for public reporting and auditing but not much change in the concentration of audit market power among the remaining Big Four global firms: Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PwC.
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How Market Power Leads to Corporate Political Influence
Neoclassical economic theory assumes that firms have no power to influence the rules of the game. A new paper by Luigi Zingales argues: This is true only in competitive product markets. When firms have market power, they will seek and obtain political influence and vice versa.
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How Financial Regulations Can Create Barriers to Entry: The Case of Cumplo in Chile
A new Stigler Center case study chronicling the story of Chile’s first crowdfunding platform and its early regulatory challenges illustrates how financial regulations can be effectively used by incumbents to stifle competition.
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Amazon at $1,000 – Should We Be Celebrating?
Amazon, whose stock price crossed $1,000 per share last week, illustrates the shortcomings of our current antitrust regime.
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“The Financialization of the U.S. Economy Has Produced Mechanisms That Lead Toward Concentration”
In this installment of ProMarket’s interview series on concentration in America, Gerald Berk from the University of Oregon discusses the political implications of concentration.
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