History
Looks Can Be Deceiving: Ronald Coase and the Chicago School
Ronald Coase is typically thought of as one of the Chicago School’s brightest lights. But Coase’s relationship with Chicago was always an uneasy one,...
Mechanics and Financiers: How Political Economy and Political Ideology Helped Make Detroit the Global Leader of the Automotive Industry
The history of automotive mass production begins with a puzzle: Why did Detroit, of all places, pioneer the industry that would shape the twentieth...
A New Antitrust Under Biden? Lessons From the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
The early history of the Sherman Antitrust Act offers relevant insights to contemporary debates on how to best enforce antitrust laws. In fact, the...
How and Why Baseball’s Legal Monopoly Came to Be
Baseball’s antitrust exemption, currently the subject of fierce political backlash, has long been a historical curiosity. Why has a professional sports league enjoyed a...
American History Provides a Valuable Lesson on How Monopolists Use Exclusive Deals to Fortify Their Market Power
Since the Civil War, dominant firms have widely and repeatedly used exclusive agreements to exert, expand, and fortify their market power. History shows that...
Freiburg and Chicago: How the Two Worlds of Neoliberalism Drifted Apart Over Market Power and Monopolies
Early neoliberals tended to view market power and monopolies as phenomena that somehow had to be reined in by an institutional framework in order...
How Sadie Alexander, the First Black Economics PhD, Became a Voice for Black Workers
A whole century has passed since Sadie Alexander became the first African American to receive a PhD in economics in the United States. Economist...
Henry Simons’s Positive Program for Laissez-Faire
The 1930s were a difficult time for classical liberals. In response to the Great Depression, the federal government undertook a massive expansion of its...
How Protests Against the Jim Crow Credit Market Changed the Civil Rights Movement
Before the civil rights movement captured the nation’s attention, activists and community groups were protesting against exploitative credit and exclusionary lending practices rooted in...
How a Wave of Corporate Takeovers Ushered In the Gospel of Shareholder Value
In an excerpt from his new book, Ages of American Capitalism, economic historian Jonathan Levy explains how "financiers blew up the postwar industrial corporation...
