Corporate subsidies are a negative-sum game. They foster crony capitalism, hurt productivity growth and inflict great harm on product market competition.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (November 4-11)
The costliest midterm election in US history ends with a victory for Democrats—and for money in politics in general; Amazon and Apple crack down on third-party refurbishers, raising antitrust concerns; and was Amazon’s HQ2 stunt really just a “con”?
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (October 27-November 4)
Facebook is still open to manipulation by malicious political actors; the dialysis industry has spent over $100 million to fight a ballot measure that seeks to regulate it; AT&T does everything it promised not to do in its defense of the Time Warner merger; and can tech workers help police their own employers?
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (October 7-14)
The DOJ approves the CVS-Aetna merger, radically altering the landscape of US health care; Sheldon Adelson pumps millions into GOP races; Silicon Valley’s Saudi Arabia problem; and who has the right to compete in America?
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Is Liberal Democracy Doomed? A Q&A With Yascha Mounk
Mounk, author of the recent book The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger & How to Save It, talks to ProMarket about populist authoritarians and undemocratic liberalism.
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (August 25–September 1)
As Trump ramps up his attacks on Google, Sen. Orrin Hatch asks the FTC to revisit its investigation of the company; as Facebook finally takes action on Myanmar, US campaign strategists reportedly gear up to flood the social network with inflammatory ads; and why are doctors and hospital groups organizing to oppose single-payer health care in California?
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Editors’ Briefing: This Week in Political Economy (July 27–August 4)
Apple hits the coveted $1 trillion mark—thanks to share buybacks; Senator Mark Warner’s proposals to regulate social media platforms make waves; Google is reportedly planning to launch a censored version of its search engine in China; and what’s behind the public battle between President Trump and the Koch brothers for control of the GOP?
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Does Ownership of Financial Assets Lead Voters to Support Republicans?
Does owning financial assets lead voters to support Republicans? New research on the liberty bonds of World War I suggests the story may be more complex.
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The Foundation of Corporate Personhood: A Look at the Charles River Bridge Case of 1837
Some 130 years before Friedman could begin arguing that a corporation’s sole responsibility was to make a profit for its shareholders, Boston’s Charles River Bridge Company had to convince the Supreme Court that corporations were private entities whose interests could diverge from the public interest. While it lost that case, the partial success of the Charles River Bridge Company’s reasoning with the court laid the foundations for corporate personhood as it exists today.
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Was the Marketplace of Ideas “Politically Hijacked”?
A Stigler Center panel examines the influence of Big Five tech firms over political discourse and the marketplace of ideas.
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Does Direct Democracy Reduce Regulatory Capture?
Does direct democracy make regulatory capture harder for industry? Samantha Eyler-Driscoll looks at a new Stigler Center working paper that examines state-level referenda and initiatives from 1904 to 2017; it finds that economic interests are largely on the defensive when these types of popular measures go on the ballot.
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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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