Regulation

ProMarket Student Editor Surya Gowda speaks with Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Katie J. Wells about her new book with Kafui Attoh and Declan Cullen, Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City. Wells discusses how Uber stepped in to solve local government failures, but introduced new problems in the process.

The following is an excerpt from Despoina Mantzari's book, "Courts, Regulators, and the Scrutiny of Economic Evidence," now out at Oxford University Press.

Single-name credit default swaps help investors manage risk, but the 2023 financial crisis showed how these opaque derivatives can suddenly throw financial markets into turmoil. Randy Priem argues that mandatory central clearing, which some authorities have suggested as a solution to managing this risk, is not the holy grail solution they believe it to be.

William J. McGee argues that airline deregulation in the United States has not delivered on its promised benefits of lower fares, increased safety, and more competition, but instead has led to industry consolidation, regional inequality, and degradation of passenger rights. McGee proposes a suite of policy recommendations to address these issues, including measures to expand geographic networks, increase airport access, encourage new entrants, simplify pricing, and improve passenger rights, labor, and safety standards.

Environmentally conscious critics of artificial intelligence worry about the massive amounts of energy and fresh water its data centers require. Alessio Terzi writes that in the long term, and with the help of government regulation, the benefits of AI-accelerated innovation will outweigh the short-term environmental costs we now observe.

Meg Leta Jones, Mac Milin Kiran and Cal Newport argue that the introduction of age verification mechanisms in proposed child online safety legislation may unintentionally result in an adults-only internet, as platforms opt to deny access to children rather than implement complex compliance measures. This potential outcome necessitates a fundamental debate about the intended audience of the internet and the balance between protecting children and preserving their rights to access and expression in the digital realm.

In new research, Christian Peukert and Margaritha Windisch review how copyright laws and practices have evolved to adapt to new technologies and discuss the various issues scholars and policymakers must address as copyright law is once again forced to adapt to the emergence of artificial intelligence.

William Megginson, Kedi Wang, and Junjie Xia find in new research that the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption campaign produced worse firm performance by reducing managers’ risk tolerance.

Bruno Pellegrino and Geoff Zheng explain how their novel methodology combining survey data and economic modeling can be used to quantify major questions, such as the economic loss from government regulation. This loss, they find, amounts to $154 billion in seven European countries each year.

Capital markets are central to capitalism and the functioning of the US economy. Yet, short-selling, an integral part of price discovery in capital markets, has been blamed as a contributor to the recent banking crisis. Lawmakers and interest groups have labeled short sellers opportunists who prey on small investors and the public without justification. The authors shed light on this debate and question the merit of the allegations.