Category Archives: Market inefficiencies

Where is Amy Klobuchar? How Democratic Indifference is Squandering a Unique Moment on Antitrust Policy

It’s been a good few weeks for opponents of further market concentration. Oil services firms Halliburton and Baker Hughes called off their merger amid a Justice Department lawsuit. New rules on corporate inversions led to an abandonment of the Pfizer-Allergan merger. The White House issued a directive to federal agencies to take steps to foster competition, with an opening salvo of ending the monopoly of cable set-top boxes. The Economist, of all places, started agitating for increased competition amid record corporate profits. The antitrust movement, in short, has gone mainstream.

Uber Spends $100 Million to Save its Business Model, But It May Have Just Doomed It

I’ve written before at this august site about how Uber’s business model is to arbitrage state and federal law and replace a monopoly with a different monopoly. They obviously placed a high value on the arbitrage. How high? About $100 million.

Robert Reich: Why Is One of Sanders’ Most Important Proposals Being Ignored?

Sanders’ financial transactions tax plan hasn’t gotten the hearing it deserves.

Rajiv Sethi: Fee-Structure Distortions in Prediction Markets

Since the launch of the pioneering Iowa Electronic Markets almost thirty years ago, prediction markets have grown to become a familiar fixture in the forecasting landscape. Among the most recent entrants is PredictIt, which has been operating for about a year under a no-action letter from the CFTC.

Misunderstanding the Great Recession

How many of the textbook explanations of the Great Depression were proven wrong, yet despite that, were misapplied to the Great Recession.

Michael Hudson and Chris Hedges: The Real World Cost of Turning Classical Economics Upside Down

Classical economics recognized the costs of rent extraction, excessive borrowing, and encouraging speculation over commerce. Ideologues have turned those lessons on their head.

Reducing Carbon Emissions Won’t Halt Economic Growth

The big obstacle to reducing carbon emissions isn’t economic costs, but inertia and the impact on powerfully placed special interests.

Media Attention and Investment Decisions

Correlations between media attention and capital flows to investment vehicles are well established. However, the question arises of whether this is due to new information conveyed or if it is just an artefact of the attention itself. This column employs fund rankings from the Wall Street Journal to investigate the issue. It shows that media attention does drive these investment decisions, even if no new information is conveyed. It further argues that financial intermediaries are aware of this effect and exploit it.

James Galbraith Describes Major Forecast Failure in Model Used by Romers to Attack Friedman on Sanders Plan

James Galbraith examines the used forecast by Christine Romer and David Romer to attack Gerald Friedman’s favorable review of Sanders’ plan. He’d already shellacked the methodology in a 2014 book.

Paul Craig Roberts on Michael Hudson’s Killing the Host

An introduction to Michael Hudson and his latest book.

Capitalism Versus The Social Commons

How the struggle over who controls the commons, the monied classes or a broader group of citizens, reveals the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.

ObamaCare’s Neoliberal Intellectual Foundations Continue to Crumble

A new study shows that health care consumers do not comparison shop, undermining a key assumption behind the ObamaCare marketplace

No Accounting for Accounting: A Review of Michael Perelman’s “Railroading Economics”

Is accounting suitable as a basis for business rationality?

How ‘Competitive’ Tax and Incentive Policies Hurt Small U.S. Businesses

Supposedly ‘competitive’ policies on tax favor multinational firms over smaller, locally-based ones and also reduce market competition.

Why Bernie Sanders Should Add a Job Guarantee to His Policy Agenda

Bernie has unapologetically rejected sclerotic visions of what is ‘politically possible’. And now he should add the Job Guarantee to his list of issues.