A new Stigler Center case study chronicling the story of Chile’s first crowdfunding platform and its early regulatory challenges illustrates how financial regulations can be effectively used by incumbents to stifle competition.
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Is Direct Democracy Better Able to Withstand the Influence of Special Interests?
A new Stigler Center working paper looks into the effects of referendums and public initiatives on public policy and finds that direct democracy better represents the will of the majority, and therefore might also be better able to counteract the power of special interests over policymaking.
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The Value of Access: How Closeness to the Obama White House Benefited Companies
Between January 2009 and December 2015, White House officials met with corporate CEOs 2,286 times. A new study, to be presented at the upcoming Stigler Center conference on the political economy of finance, shows that access to the White House has several economic benefits.
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“Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″
Media scholar Jonathan Taplin, author of the new book Move Fast and Break Things, on the rent-seeking and regulatory capture of digital platforms.
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The Powerful Private Regulator and the Effects of Conflicts of Interest
A new study reveals both the potential biases in the proxy advisory industry and how a new entrant can help mitigate conflicts of interest.
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Is There a Case to be Made for Political Antitrust?
After decades of approaching antitrust through purely economic analyses, are economists once again willing to take into account political considerations as well?
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Wells Fargo and the Failure of Boards and Regulators
Two new reports concerning the Wells Fargo scandal suggest that the bank’s senior management, its board of directors, and the regulators all knew about the bank’s toxic practices, yet for years did nothing to stop them.
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I Was a Whistleblower. The Fed Is Not Doing Enough to Fix Wall Street’s Culture of Fear
Deutsche Bank whistleblower Eric Ben-Artzi, who publicly rejected a multimillion dollar award from the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer, writes about the failure of regulators to fix the culture that wreaked havoc on the financial system.
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How Many Newt Gingrich’s Are There in Washington? Much More Than You Might Think
As more and more lobbyists move to consulting and PR agencies, experts say the underworld of hidden lobbying is probably much bigger than what formal disclosures and registries reveal.
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Richard Posner: “The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich”
In a keynote interview during the Stigler Center’s conference on concentration in America, Judge Posner said: “You are not going to have people competing with the Koch brothers.” On antitrust, Posner said: “Antitrust is dead, isn’t it?”
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Conference: Is There a Concentration Problem in America?
On March 27-29, the Stigler Center will host a first-of-its-kind, three-day conference on the question of concentration in the U.S. economy that will bring together top economists, policymakers, regulators, journalists, and public intellectuals.
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Does Regulation Build Trust or Entrench Cliques? Lessons From Merchant Guilds and the Taxi Industry
Close-knit networks, like guilds and taxi associations, are helpful in enhancing trust and reliability. Yet they can also become exclusive and rent-seeking.
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