The rise of Trump and an agenda for regulatory reform

Kaushik Basu

Journal of Policy Modeling, 2018, vol. 40, issue 3, 546-558

Abstract: The arrival of Trump in the White House does not augur well for the long-run prospects of the US economy. The protectionism that is gathering steam under his presidency may yield some short-term gains, but at the detriment of the long-run. Examining the discontent among ordinary voters that brought Trump to power, this paper argues that this should be treated as an opportunity for a major regulatory reform. With the advance of digital technology, we have increasing returns to scale, and that, in turn, is making our antitrust laws backfire and hurt the well-being of ordinary people, thereby sowing discontent. The paper builds a simple model to illustrate this and makes the case for revoking the older antitrust laws and replacing them with some simple profit-sharing rules at the level of the firm, and the economy.

Keywords: Protectionism; Antitrust law; Increasing returns; Price discrimination; Profit sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:40:y:2018:i:3:p:546-558

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2018.03.007

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