The signals of unrest in Chile mounted for years amid corruption scandals, rising inequality, and new monopolies. The tax increase on public transport that sparked the protests was only the final straw.
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How the Supreme Court Is Rebranding Corruption
In thirteen years of hostile decisions, the Roberts Supreme Court has done all it can to legalize corruption. With the Bridgegate case, it gets a chance to wreak even more havoc and possibly end the use of the term “corruption” as a useful legal concept.
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“Emmanuel Macron Is Not a Liberal, He Just Pretends to Be”
The French president found himself under fire following an attempted police raid on the offices of the investigative news site Mediapart. While many around the world were shocked, Mediapart’s journalists themselves were not entirely surprised.
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When the Interests of Monopolists and Authoritarians Coalesce
It is when the behemoth of monopoly enterprise consorts with the leviathan of the authoritarian state that both are likely to achieve permanence, writes Raghuram Rajan.
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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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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (August 18–25)
America’s white-collar prosecution crisis; Elizabeth Warren has a new bill that aims to separate money from politics; Facebook struggles with the daunting task of moderating 2 billion people; and is Google risking press freedom by re-entering the Chinese market?
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The World Cup of Fraud
Scandal-rocked FIFA has sought to scrub up its image by bringing in ostensibly disinterested outsiders to fill oversight roles. Here, Steven A. Bank argues that internal whistleblowers are in fact better suited to improving the organizational culture that led to FIFA’s corruption.
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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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How China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Is Moving Financing Away from State-Owned Enterprises
Are anti-corruption reforms effective in reducing economic rent seeking and constraining the influence of special interests? New research from Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance finds that anti-corruption investigations in China are associated with credit reallocation from less productive state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to more productive non-SOEs. The series of investigations constitute staggered events to identify the causal impact of anti-corruption reforms on bank financing.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (April 28–May 4)
George Mason University faces controversy over its relationship with donors; the former CEO of Volkswagen is charged in relation to the company’s diesel emissions cheating scandal; and are Google and Facebook already trying to undermine Europe’s new privacy rules?
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What Glue Holds Communist Capitalism Together in China? Cronyism
With a few cronyist tweaks, China’s communist leaders made capitalism safe for Party rule. But will cronyism become China’s next booming export?
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When Taxpayers Subsidize Corporate Lobbying: How Firms Use Charitable Giving to Influence Politics
A new Stigler Center working paper examines a more roundabout way that companies can influence legislators: by donating money to charities in lawmakers’ districts. The authors find that the magnitude of these tax-exempt charitable flows dwarfs what firms spend in PACs.
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