Zingales

Is the "Abundance” agenda just a kinder, gentler version of “Muskism”? Quinn Slobodian and I explore on the latest Capitalisn't podcast. Listen to our full conversation here: youtube.com/watch?v=pHRjHh…

📢#CallForPapers - Stigler Center-CEPR Political Economy of Finance Conference 2026: Crony Capitalism in 21st Century America ⌛Deadline: 1 June Keynote: Simon Johnson @baselinescene Organisers: @lambert_thom, Enrico Perotti, @r_jmagda, @zingales ow.ly/tAUg50Z05jS

So much for the information quality of legacy media !

When a company offers securities to investors, it is required to disclose the future prospects of that investment and is held accountable for those promises. When universities solicit students to invest in their degrees, they are not required to disclose the financial return of those degrees, nor are they held accountable for their promises. Universities aggressively market degrees, allowing students to borrow even when studying in fields with possibly no return on investment. On the latest Capitalins’t podcast, I argue this is a catastrophic failure of incentives. Lenders have absolutely nothing at stake because borrowers cannot go bankrupt on college loans. To fix this, we must force universities to have skin in the game. If universities were at least partially financially liable for bad outcomes, they would stop pushing students into disastrous debt. Listen to the full podcast with @noamscheiber here: youtube.com/watch?v=KpZJmB…

If you ever took an Econ 101 class, you may have been sold a sanitized version of capitalism's “founding father”. We are taught to revere Adam Smith as a free-market promoter and popularizer of the "invisible hand." But what was left out of the textbooks is that Smith was also a theorist of power. Georgetown University Assistant Professor Glory Liu and author of “Adam Smith’s America” joined me on Capitalisn't to uncover the anti-crony thinker that modern economics ignored. It's time to rediscover the true Adam Smith. Catch the full Capitalisn't episode on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts to understand why reclaiming Smith's true legacy is essential to fighting the cronyism that is suffocating our economy today.

About the Trump Administration's attack on @AnthropicAI, @deanwball states it much better than I in @ezraklein’s podcast: “it’s a profound problem if the government says you don’t have the right to exist if you create a system that is not aligned the way we say. Because that is fascism.”

US’s economic exceptionalism was based on massive advantages from 250 years of commitment to rule of law ideals. Trump is destroying all of this. Investors must re-price. “Trump’s Attack on Capitalism” ⁦@zingales⁩ promarket.org/2026/03/04/tru…

The defense production act provides the legitimate tool for intervention . Boycotting is not justified . It is a dangerous tool to allow the government to use.

The Trump administration’s attack on Anthropic is a direct assault on capitalism launched by a president who seems to respect our system only when it satisfies his financial and ideological interests. The U.S. military is a monopsony. Using that market weight to ruin a disobedient firm is an antitrust violation orchestrated by the state. This isn't about national security; if it were, they would have invoked the Defense Production Act. This is purely punitive right-wing “wokeism”. An administration that uses state power to force companies to bend to its ideological whims is not capitalist; it is authoritarian. Capitalists of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. Read my full piece here: promarket.org/2026/03/04/tru…

March 9 will be the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations. How would Adam Smith judge our economy today? We discuss it with @Jesse_Norman, author of Adam Smith, Father of Economics, and British MP. capitalisnt.com/episodes/adam-…

The recent debates on @weeklyshowpod with @R_Thaler & @oren_cass point to a larger issue that I think is right: something is off with our standard economic narratives. Too often, our profession defends outdated paradigms, blinding us to the fact that American capitalism is failing most Americans. Our role as economists should be to figure out what is right and wrong, not only in our models but also in real-world outcomes. I joined Cass on the @AmerCompass podcast this week to discuss why it’s time to rethink our standard narratives. youtube.com/watch?v=GH1m2V…

Thanks

I agree

Exactly

Is sports betting really a fair game between consumers and companies? To me, it looks more like David against Goliath. I believe in personal responsibility, but the consumer is now facing an army of PhDs in psychology designed to exploit their weaknesses. These companies know if you are depositing money faster than usual, betting on weeknights, or if your credit card has been declined. In our latest Capitalisn’t podcast with Jonathan Cohen, author of Losing Big, we discuss what he calls the "reckless" liberalization of this industry and what the costs of this asymmetry are today. Full podcast here: youtube.com/watch?v=D_KuP7…

Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into that

Who should the Fed answer to? Former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England Sir Paul Tucker discusses central bank autonomy with #Capitalisnt hosts @bethanymac12 and @zingales ms.spr.ly/6015QyEyP

.@rodrikdani argues that the manufacturing blueprint for the middle class is closed and we have "no other choice" but a services economy. But can we elevate service jobs to a level where they can create a sustainable middle-class? Surgeons were once seen as no better than barbers, yet today they are at the top of the pyramid. Can we do the same for the caregivers of our future? We discuss this week on our Capitalisn’t podcast: youtube.com/watch?v=gp7WQ_…

More evidence that Meta is following the tobacco industry playbook for avoiding responsibility. (See p. 5 for evidence that it's mostly Meta). arxiv.org/pdf/2601.11507

For decades, the standard economic blueprint for a middle-class society was simple: industrialization. But in our latest Capitalisn’t podcast, @rodrikdani makes a very sobering case that this door is now effectively closed. The data is hard to ignore: - Even in China, the undisputed leader in production, tens of millions of manufacturing jobs are vanishing. - In the U.S., despite serious efforts to rebuild the industrial base, manufacturing’s share of total employment continues to fall. - The 10 largest occupations of the next decade are projected to all be in non-traded services like long-term care and retail. Rodrik argues the future of our society will be built on services because we simply have "no other choice". The question now is whether we can make those jobs productive enough to sustain a middle-class. Full podcast: youtube.com/watch?v=gp7WQ_…