Economists' capture
How to Fix the Courts’ Misuse of Economics
Economics has a valuable role to play in antitrust enforcement, but the courts often base their antitrust decisions on unfounded empirical claims or the...
Academic Gatekeepers, Real and Imagined, Are Threatening the Credibility of the Field of Political Finance
One objective of political finance is to hold power to account. However, gatekeeping, both direct and indirect, is keeping important work from being conducted...
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...
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...
A New Capitalisn't Episode: Did the Economists of the '60s and '70s Ruin the Economy?
Are economists to blame for our current state of affairs? That's the argument Binyamin Appelbaum makes in his book "The Economists' Hour." In this...
Data-Driven Ideology: The Problem With Economists' Takeover of Policymaking
According to New York Times journalist Binyamin Appelbaum's recent book The Economists' Hour, economics is not the unbiased science that it pretends to be, but...
Corporations and the Rise of the Chicago Law and Economics Movement
From its birth in 1946 onward, corporations made possible and crucially supported the rise of the Chicago law and economics movement. Aaron Director,...
