In this second installment of his three-part series on antitrust’s recent resurrection, Matt Stoller discusses the legacy of Obama’s presidency. The real policy for which Obama will be known is not Obamacare or Dodd-Frank, but bailing out the banks after the 2008 financial crisis and helping Americans and the rest of the world understand that liberal democratic rhetoric was really an ornamental cover for a system of concentrated financial and political power.
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In the first part of a three-part series, Matt Stoller explains why antimonopoly politics is experiencing a resurgence.
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At the launch of the IFS Deaton Review, a 5-year review of rising inequalities in the UK, Sir Angus Deaton decried extreme inequality and the system that allows it. “As it is, capitalism is not delivering to large fractions of the population.”
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Waiting for further proof of causal mechanisms before addressing the anticompetitive harm caused by horizontal shareholding is unjustified, just as it was when people argued we should wait for evidence of causal mechanisms before acting on empirical evidence that smoking causes cancer.
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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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Simply adding competition in the tech sector won’t solve problems like privacy abuses or discrimination. Competition is needed, but regulation is a necessary element of any tech solution.
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Weak antitrust enforcement set the stage for Facebook and Google to extract the fruits of publishers’ labor. We won’t be able to save journalism and solve our disinformation problem unless we weaken monopolies’ power.
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The growing use of artificial intelligence to price insurance could erode basic legal protections built into the law to protect both individuals and the insurance market. To prevent discrimination and ensure fairness, regulators must begin to develop new capacities and tools.
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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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The notion that Facebook, Google, and Twitter should be assigned fiduciary duties toward their end users has gained broad support in recent years. However, this proposed framework invites policy misfires since it fails to grapple with the structural dimensions of tech platforms’ power.
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How does the revolving door between Congress and corporate America affect the enforcement of tax policy? A new study examines how tax rates change when firms hire former members of Congress, finding that companies’ tax bills and the probability of being audited decrease markedly when they hire a former legislator.
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Digital platforms present an enforcement challenge sufficiently daunting that it requires major reforms to antitrust law. But in order to restore lost competition, we need more than antitrust reform; we need better regulators. And for both, we need Congress to act.
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