Economists have for a decade or so theorized that moving productive inputs like labor and capital into the firms that make the best use of them is a prime engine of economic growth. But measuring how well this allocation is taking place across economies is a daunting empirical task. Nonetheless, a new Stigler Center working paper by Lenzu and Manaresi tries to do precisely that.
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Early childcare can be a major contributor to eliminating inequality of opportunity and even lay the foundations for a more productive workforce in the future.
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Back in the 1960s, George Stigler called into question whether states should require firms to publicly report their financials. A recent Stigler Center working paper revisits this issue and measures the impact of the different levels of financial reporting and auditing mandates around Europe on resource allocation.
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The question of whether people are born with innovative talent or can develop it has knock-on effects to issues ranging from productivity growth in the macroeconomy to innovators’ wages to the gender gap in entrepreneurship. Here the authors report the results of an experiment that aimed to “create” new innovators.
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A decade after the financial crisis, average faith in market institutions is recovering—especially among high-income individuals and Republicans—while trust in government is on a downward trend.
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At this year’s annual ASSA meeting, Stigler Center Director Luigi Zingales delivered a lecture honoring Oliver Hart, winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for economics. Read the full lecture.
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New research from Hans K. Hvide and Paul Oyer has uncovered some interesting facts about men who start businesses: most of them do it in the same or related industries as their fathers work in, although entrepreneurs with higher IQs are less likely to follow their dads. Ones who do pick their fathers’ industries, however, outperform competing entrepreneurs. Here, the authors examine why.
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A new site created by ProMarket board member Amit Seru (Stanford) and co-authors Mark Egan (Harvard) and Gregor Matvos (UT Austin) offers free data and analysis on the financial advisory industry, including rankings for each firm, county, and state in terms of financial adviser misconduct.
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The time has come for companies, economists, and society to abandon the argument that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits.
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A new Stigler Center working paper conducts a cost-benefit analysis of DuPont’s emissions of a toxic chemical dubbed C8.
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In June, the Stigler Center brought together top academics for a conference on the impact of politics on finance. Ahead of our second annual Political Economy of Finance conference, we are seeking papers related to the interaction between politics and business.
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The problem with encouraging firms to maximize shareholder welfare is how to prevent managers and special interests from diverting corporate resources in the name of shareholder welfare to causes that provide them, their family, or their friends with private benefits.
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