Issue Areas
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth is engaged in an array of issues to advance evidence-based ideas and policies that promote strong, stable, and broad-based economic growth.
249 Results
Terms and conditions for generative AI users outline a new legal framework that puts U.S. consumers at risk (opens in a new tab)
Essays Aug 20, 2026
Generative AI, or genAI, is a form of artificial intelligence that produces content in response to prompts and includes large language model chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude.…
ASSA 2026 Round-up: Day 3 (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jan 6, 2026
Yesterday was the third and final day of the 2026 annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations, which is organized by the American Economic Association. The 3-day conference, held…
ASSA 2026 Round-up: Day 2 (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jan 5, 2026
Yesterday was the second day of the 2026 annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations, which is organized by the American Economic Association. The 3-day conference, held in Philadelphia…
ASSA 2026 Round-up: Day 1 (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jan 4, 2026
Yesterday was the first day of the 2026 annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations, which is organized by the American Economic Association. The 3-day conference, held in Philadelphia…
What impact is artificial intelligence having on the U.S. labor market and the nation’s economy? (opens in a new tab)
Essays Nov 14, 2025
As new and groundbreaking technologies emerge, they can function as a blank canvas onto which people project both aspirations and anxieties. Artificial intelligence—despite its quick uptake in broader society and…
Equity Prices, Market Power, and Optimal Corporate Tax Policy (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Jul 22, 2025
We study the optimal design of corporate tax policy in a textbook life-cycle model featuring two key deviations: (i) firms are imperfectly competitive and (ii) households save by purchasing equity…
Request for Proposals: The economic effects of the Inflation Reduction Act (opens in a new tab)
RFPs Apr 2, 2025
Understanding market concentration in the AI supply chain (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jan 28, 2025
Artificial intelligence is more than just the applications we use, such as chatbots and predictive algorithms. Beneath the surface of AI lies a technology stack that is increasingly concentrated at…
Request for Proposals: Promoting competition and supporting workers in an era of AI innovation (opens in a new tab)
RFPs Nov 20, 2024
Request for proposals: Research grants for early career scholars (opens in a new tab)
RFPs Oct 30, 2024
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As hospitals merge over time, FTC enforcement actions remain low (opens in a new tab)
Visualizations Jul 25, 2024
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The impact of rising U.S. healthcare prices on changes in unemployment across the income distribution (opens in a new tab)
Visualizations Jul 25, 2024
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U.S. hospital prices have grown faster than any other major category of consumption (opens in a new tab)
Visualizations Jul 25, 2024
Hospital consolidation and rising health care prices lead to job losses for U.S. workers (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Jul 25, 2024
The majority of working-age adults in the United States have health insurance via their employers. Theory and a growing body of research suggest that when the cost of workers’ benefits…
Is There Too Little Antitrust Enforcement in the US Hospital Sector? (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Apr 24, 2024
From 2002 to 2020, there were over 1,000 mergers of US hospitals. During this period, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took enforcement actions against 13 transactions. However, using the FTC’s…
Combating market power through a graduated U.S. corporate income tax (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 15, 2024
Editor’s note: This version has been updated from the original publication on April 15, 2024. The update corrects a prior underestimate of the revenue potential from graduated corporate tax rates…
Hospital consolidation matters (opens in a new tab)
Reports Apr 4, 2024
The U.S. policy landscape is replete with reports from organizations across the political spectrum decrying the lack of competition in hospital markets around the nation and the resulting high prices,…
Matching competition policy in the U.S. healthcare industry to address a new generation of challenges in provider markets (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 20, 2024
Antitrust policy in the U.S. healthcare sector is perennially 10 years behind the industry. But at the start of the Biden administration in early 2021, there was hope for a…
Request for Proposals: How effective was the fiscal response to the COVID-19 recession for workers? (opens in a new tab)
RFPs Mar 18, 2024
The impacts of increasing U.S. hospital consolidation on Medicaid recipients (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jan 25, 2024
The U.S. healthcare sector is a consequential part of the overall economy. As of 2021, U.S. healthcare expenditures alone would rank third among the world’s largest economies in terms of…
What the research says about the impacts of hospital consolidation across the United States (opens in a new tab)
Blog Dec 6, 2023
When patients in the United States rely on hospitals for care, they are often at their most vulnerable, such as during acute illnesses, when suffering major injuries, or while giving…
Request for proposals: Research grants for early career scholars (opens in a new tab)
RFPs Nov 30, 2023
Sameera Fazili and Mary Beth Maxwell join Equitable Growth’s Board of Directors (opens in a new tab)
Blog Nov 15, 2023
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today announced the addition of two new members to its board of directors: Sameera Fazili, former deputy assistant to the president and deputy director…
The consequences of U.S. hospital consolidation on local economies, healthcare providers, and patients (opens in a new tab)
Reports Nov 15, 2023
Policymakers, regulators, stakeholders, and academics have yet to grapple with the full cross-sectional impacts of hospital mergers. While the evidence is clear that consolidation leads to higher prices in concentrated…
Antitrust Enforcement Increases Economic Activity (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Sep 13, 2023
We hand-collect and standardize information describing all 3,055 antitrust lawsuits brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) between 1971 and 2018. Using restricted establishment-level microdata from the U.S. Census, we…
U.S. labor market concentration, competition, and worker bargaining power as employment trends shift from manufacturing to services (opens in a new tab)
Blog Sep 6, 2023
Labor market concentration and competition in the United States has received renewed and well-deserved attention over the past several years. Competitive labor markets are critical engines of economic growth, worker…
Local and National Concentration Trends in Jobs and Sales: The Role of Structural Transformation (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Sep 6, 2023
National industrial concentration in the U.S. has risen sharply since the early 1980s, but there remains dispute over whether local geographic concentration has followed a similar trend. Using near population…
New data and analysis suggest private equity takeovers of U.S. medical practices cause anticompetitive harms to patients, insurers, and employers in local markets (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jul 10, 2023
The linked resources and the PDF for this piece were updated on February 20, 2024. Private equity firms are deeply engaged in buying up and consolidating medical practices across the…
Equitable Growth delivers comment letter responding to the Federal Trade Commission’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Non-Compete Clauses (opens in a new tab)
Blog Apr 20, 2023
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth this week delivered a comment letter responding to the Federal Trade Commission’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Non-Compete Clauses. In our comment letter,…
Major federal ‘Big Tech’ antitrust case against Google will test the strength of current U.S. antitrust laws in new digital markets (opens in a new tab)
Blog Mar 13, 2023
A high-profile antitrust enforcement action taken in January by the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice against Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit—one of the largest technology companies in the…
New research suggests connections between market concentration and the exercise of political power in the United States (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jan 12, 2023
Consolidation of markets at the hands of U.S. companies that are actively engaged in mergers and acquisitions raises an important question about the political ramifications of market concentration. Do mergers…
Political Power and Market Power (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Jan 12, 2023
We study the link between political influence and industrial concentration. A model of an oligopoly that engages in lobbying shows that a merger may lead to an increase or a…
Power and Dignity in the Low-Wage Labor Market: Theory and Evidence from Wal-Mart Workers (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Dec 14, 2022
We measure workers’ preferences for wages and non-wage amenities at America’s largest employer, Walmart, using targeted survey experiments. We find that workers have an economically significant willingness to pay for…
Supermarket chain Kroger’s takeover of rival Albertsons is a test for U.S. antitrust law on pre-closing dividends (opens in a new tab)
Blog Nov 16, 2022
The recently proposed $24.6 billion takeover of the nation’s fourth-largest supermarket chain, Albertsons Companies Inc., by the second-largest chain, Kroger Co., poses an array of serious and apparent antitrust concerns…
Equitable Growth names Shayna Strom as interim president and CEO (opens in a new tab)
Blog Sep 8, 2022
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today announced that Shayna Strom has been named its interim president and CEO. Strom comes to the organization with decades of experience bridging nonprofits,…
NBER Summer Institute 2022 Round-up: Week 2 (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jul 26, 2022
On July 11, the National Bureau of Economic Research kicked off its summer institute, an annual 3-week conference featuring discussions and paper presentations on various topics in economics, including disaggregating…
Common ownership in the U.S. economy (opens in a new tab)
Blog May 25, 2022
Large investment management companies such as BlackRock Inc., The Vanguard Group Inc., and Fidelity Investments—each with tens of trillions of dollars of assets under management—offer a wide array of mutual…
A Tale of Two Networks: Common Ownership and Product Market Rivalry (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers May 25, 2022
We study the welfare implications of the rise of common ownership in the United States from 1994 to 2018. We build a general equilibrium model with a hedonic demand system…
Protecting livestock producers and chicken growers (opens in a new tab)
Reports May 5, 2022
For more than a decade, ranchers, contract chicken growers, and other livestock producers have expressed concerns about the actions of the meatpackers who buy the livestock and slaughter it, and…
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will bring new perspectives on mass incarceration to U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Apr 7, 2022
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made history today after the U.S. Senate confirmed her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 53 to 47. The Senate vote sealed…
Walmart is a monopsonist that depresses earnings and employment beyond its own walls, but U.S. policymakers can do something about it (opens in a new tab)
Issue Briefs Mar 29, 2022
Labor income inequality is a major cause for concern in the U.S. economy. For 35 years beginning around 1980 the wages of workers steadily grew more and more unequal. This…
Closing the Innovation Gap in Pink and Black (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Jan 10, 2022
Recent research shows the negative impact of discrimination not only on the targets of discrimination but also on the economy as a whole. Racial and gender inequality can limit the…
Falling Rates and Rising Superstars (opens in a new tab)
Working Papers Jan 7, 2022
Do low interest rates contribute to the rise in market concentration? Using data on firm financials and high frequency monetary policy shocks, we find that falling interest rates disproportionately benefit…
Equitable Growth’s academic research and policy priorities shine through at Southern Economic Conference 2021 (opens in a new tab)
Blog Dec 9, 2021
The Southern Economic Association recently held its 91st Annual Meeting, gathering a diverse group of scholars from U.S. and international universities to discuss their research in theory and applied economics.…
Equitable Growth announces record $1.39 million in research grants for scholars examining economic inequality and growth (opens in a new tab)
Blog Aug 30, 2021
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth today announced its 2021 research grants, with funding of $1,392,795—a record-breaking level—awarded to 62 researchers. These scholars are studying the various channels through which…
Myths about competition in the global economy harm humanity and our planet (opens in a new tab)
Blog Aug 11, 2021
Competition around the globe is facing a crisis today. Mega corporations benefit from neoliberal ideologies and lax enforcement of the antitrust laws. Growing market power among fewer and fewer firms…
In Conversation with Michelle Meagher (opens in a new tab)
In Conversation Aug 11, 2021
Equitable Growth in Conversation is a recurring series where we talk with economists and other academics to help us better understand whether and how economic inequality affects economic growth and…
Competitive Edge: Congress needs to restore the Federal Trade Commission’s authority to seek monetary remedies when companies break the law (opens in a new tab)
Blog Jul 28, 2021
Antitrust and competition issues are receiving renewed interest, and for good reason. So far, the discussion has occurred at a high level of generality. To address important specific antitrust enforcement…
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