Corporate Governance
Capture and Ignorance in Financial Regulation
The most fruitful avenue for reducing regulatory capture is to impose more checks-and-balances on our agencies, reversing recent trends toward expediency.
After spending some years...
How Rich are the Parents of Your Money Manager, and What Does it Tell You About his Alpha?
In the last few decades, numerous studies in financial literature have been devoted to the question of “alpha”—that is, the ability of money managers...
(God Knows) Wall Street Isn’t Perfect, But It Has Helped Make the World A Lot Better Off
If the criticisms against Wall Street had been accurate, the U.S. corporate sector today would be ailing. Instead, corporate profits are at historical highs...
Does Wall Street Do “God’s Work”? Or Even Anything Useful?
Bank executives frequently proclaim that Wall Street is vital to the nation’s economy and performs socially valuable services by raising capital, providing liquidity to...
Rents and the High Cost of High Finance: Q&A with Gerald Epstein
New study estimates that the total costs of America’s flawed financial system–rents, misallocation costs, and the costs of the 2008 crisis–will add up to...
Death by Regulation: How Regulations that Once Protected the Taxi Industry Now Threaten its Existence
New study by researchers at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University highlights the need to rethink taxi regulations.
“The natural progress of things,” Jefferson...
Political Rents and Profits in Regulated Industries
A new working paper by James Bessen from Boston University finds that much of the rise in corporate profits since 2000 was caused by political...
Preventing Regulatory Capture
When a regulation’s benefits exceed its costs, simplicity and interdisciplinary processes are essential to reducing capture.
Regulatory capture arises when regulatory decisions advance private interests...
Market Power and Inequality: How Big Should Antitrust’s Role Be in Reducing Inequality?
Is the rise of wealth inequality in the United States related to a decline in competition? A new paper answers in the affirmative.
Is the...
Is More Antitrust the Answer to Rising Wealth Inequality?
University of Michigan professor Daniel Crane: “The story that somehow antitrust law is dead, that it’s been killed, is wrong. It hasn’t. It’s very...
