The rise of giants like Amazon and Facebook proves the long-lasting influence of Director’s approach. His intellectual and political legacy is the transition of legitimacy from democratic institutions as the locus of governing power to private monopolies.
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An innovative new study finds substantial, increasing deadweight losses resulting from oligopolistic behavior and points to the important role that startup acquisitions—particularly by large tech firms—played in driving this trend.
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Ahead of our fourth annual Theory of the Firm conference, we are soliciting papers dedicated to the topic of academic lobbying.
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In the same way that Capital in the Twenty-First Century transformed the way economists look at inequality, Piketty’s new book Capital and Ideology will transform the way political scientists look at their own field.
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The two big ideas that animated American public policy since the end of World War II, employer-sponsored social benefits and neoliberalism, are failures. We need better options.
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In his review of Paul Collier’s recent book The Future of Capitalism, Branko Milanovic discusses ideology, social democracy, and the “ethical world.”
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Delivering UChicago’s 532nd Convocation address, Luigi Zingales advised young graduates to embrace their power as consumers, workers, and citizens and fight corporate monopolies.
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Inappropriate financial donor influence at institutions of higher education appears to be on the rise and risks eroding public trust in academic research. In order to defend academic freedom and institutional independence, we have decided to create a new database to document clear violations of well-accepted norms involving financial donations.
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Columbia professor Suresh Naidu on Economics for Inclusive Prosperity, the new initiative he launched with Dani Rodrik and Gabriel Zucman, and why he believes economics shouldn’t be conflated with neoliberalism.
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Profits are the ultimate sign of market power. But for the past 40 years, economists and antitrust practitioners have disparaged the measurement of profit margins as unreliable. That needs to change, and new scholarship showing rising margins across the economy is leading the way.
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While increased economies of scale may offer a partial explanation for higher margins and declining dynamism in the US economy, growing market power provides a better explanation, argues Jonathan Baker.
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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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