History
A Famed Economist’s Public Company U-Turn
Michael Jensen, a leading late 20th century economist, pivoted from praising public companies in the 1970s to assailing public company governance in the 1980s and 1990s. Disappointment that corporate executives did much to thwart takeover activity prompted Jensen’s 180-degree turn.
Carl Schmitt and the Origins of Friedrich Hayek’s Thought on Rent-Seeking
Friedrich Hayek viewed the subject of rent-seeking not from the usual welfare economics perspective, but from a constitutional economics perspective. In a new paper,...
How the AT&T Case Can Inform Big Tech Breakups
Breaking up companies that antitrust regulators consider too dominant can be costly and might negatively impact innovation and consumer welfare. As economists and policymakers...
To Build an Equitable Economy, We Must Understand Capitalism’s Racist Heritage
American capitalism was built on racial exploitation, from the enslavement of Black people to institutionalized discrimination and its structural impact on our nation’s economic...
Resisting Regulatory Capture in the 1857 Financial Crisis
The historical origins of financial crises teaches us about changing attitudes toward government intervention into private markets.
A lesson frequently taught by twentieth century economists...
The FTC’s Non-Compete Ban Will Force Questions Over the Scope of its Authority
To understand why a proposed rule could spark a Supreme Court battle over the Federal Trade Commission’s powers to regulate the American economy requires...
The Varied Ideologies—and Practices—of Socialist Nations in the Developing World
In an excerpt from his new book Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World, Harvard Business School professor Jeremy Friedman explores the...
Lessons from the Past? How Ordoliberal Competition Theory Can Address Market Power in the Digital Age
Some of the lessons uncovered by ordoliberal thinkers during the interwar period in Germany could help us tackle the current challenges posed by the...
The Invention of Economic Growth: The Forgotten Origins of Gross Domestic Product in American Institutionalist Economics
Contemporary critiques of GDP’s role in policymaking see it as an ideological abstraction, emblematic of neoliberalism, that misrepresents “real” economic conditions. What these critiques...
Plagues Upon the Earth: How Wealth Intersects With Mortality
Kyle Harper’s new book, Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, shows that the story of disease is entangled with...
