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Category: Monopoly

The Past and Future of Antitrust

Stoller’s goal in Goliath is to cast the economic history of the United States as an epic struggle between the big and the little, between evil and powerful monopolies and the resistance of a few heroic champions of small business, market competition, and eco­nomic liberty. Among the virtuous are Louis Brandeis, Robert Jack­son, Thurman Arnold, and, especially, Patman…

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The War within Corporate America

In the 2020 election cycle, corporate America seems under attack from all directions. Elizabeth Warren and Mark Zuckerberg are in a war of words; Bernie Sanders has proposed codetermination, partial employee ownership, and other major corporate governance reforms; Joe Biden has called for insurance company executives to be jailed; and Donald Trump regularly attacks Jeff…

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Squaring the Circular Economy

Phillips and Rozworski are at their best in analyzing the scale and scope of central planning in economies dominated by large corporations. In doing so, they demonstrate the inadequacy of ideological debates premised on the opposition between “free markets” and a “command economy.” People’s Republic of Walmart also scores points against the dwindling band…

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Corporate Power Beyond Lobbying

The biases that private interests can introduce into politics have always been a key concern for democratic theory. Lobbying in particular has come into the focus of social science research since the beginning of the twentieth century. After a century of study, there is a general consensus that the freedom of political participation creates an…

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Trade, Antitrust, and Restoring Domestic Competition

Will more restrictive trade policies harm the U.S. economy by shielding domestic businesses against competition? That’s what standard economic theory holds, insisting that pressure from foreign rivals is needed for U.S.-based businesses to continue to in­novate, to create the highest quality goods, and to sell them for the lowest possible prices. Although this theory has…

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Uber’s Path of Destruction

Since it began operations in 2010, Uber has grown to the point where it now collects over $45 billion in gross passenger revenue, and it has seized a major share of the urban car service market. But the widespread belief that it is a highly innovative and successful company has no basis in economic reality. An examination of Uber’s economics suggests that it has no hope of ever earning sustainable urban car service profits in competitive markets…

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Subscription Capitalism: The Story of a Power Shift

The emergence of the internet changed the business landscape in fundamental ways. Computer-based services could be offered to anyone irrespective of geographic restrictions. This meant that internet companies could become globally significant with relatively little initial investment, as demonstrated by Facebook, Google, and several others. Their ability to rapidly concentrate wealth with relatively little overhead…

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The Illusion of a “Marketplace of Ideas” and the Right to Truth

The traditional model of a “marketplace of ideas” was intended to justify freedom of speech in terms of its optimal outcome in the production of truth. But today our behavior on the internet, the main locus of the “marketplace of ideas,” is continuously monitored and processed through the analysis of big data. Complex algorithms categorize…

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Peter Thiel, Rachel Carson, and Regulatory Double Standards

Buried in the middle of a two-hour debate in 2014 on religion and modernity is a thought-provoking observation by Peter Thiel regarding technology and the modern economy. Instead of praising Silicon Valley for its tremendous digital inventiveness, Thiel criticized the technological advances of the last fifty years…

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“Getting Away with Murder”: Prescription Drug Coverage in America

Nine days before the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, Vice President Elect Mike Pence strode to the press conference podium. He reviewed the transition team’s progress in nominating cabinet secretaries, but quickly turned his attention to the “concerted effort . . . to delegitimize this election and to demean our incoming administration.” Although pledging his…

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