Zingales

The constitutional convention failed to do that too. It took the Bill of Rights to have those protections.

We often think of our Constitution as a triumph of democracy, but Harvard legal historian Michael Klarman argues in our latest Capitalisn’t podcast that the Framers used layered elections, like the Electoral College, to filter ordinary men out of high office. Was it an elitist view of democracy or a conspiracy to protect the wealthy? We discuss it with Klarman, author of The Framers' Coup, on the latest Capitalisn’t. Watch the full episode: youtube.com/watch?v=-Rcc-J…

I agree, it is a very nice paper. Trump stopped disclosing the White House log, so it is impossible to replicate the study under him. The very fact he did it suggests how much more valuable access has become. Yet the problem did not start with him . It has been long in the making.

In 2012, I warned America risked sliding into a Berlusconi-style economy where access matters more than efficiency. Fourteen years later, investors are pricing presidential attention alongside earnings and cash flow.  I spoke to @YasminKhorram at @politico about what that means: politico.com/news/2026/07/1…

How does a free, decentralized, volunteer-run encyclopedia produce something more trusted than many for-profit institutions? @zingales & @bethanymac12 sit down with Wikipedia founder @jimmy_wales on the latest Capitalisn’t to explore how the platform organizes global knowledge. 🎧 Full podcast below 👇

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…