When a YIMBY tells you to ignore the monopoly problem in rentals—owing to common algorithms and common ownership or both—and focus instead on expanding supply, show him this graph. 🧵 We prefer a movement from the original monopoly price (Pm0) to the competitive price (Pc0), which for reasonable supply expansions, is bigger than the movement to the new monopoly price (Pm1).

Trailer for Lina Khan interview on 60 minutes

Stahl: Are you actually saying it’s greedflation?

Khan: We’ve actually heard executives boast on earnings calls about how inflation is great for their bottom line.

(I’ll be adding other fire balls here as the interview unfolds) Khan believes that “Widespread corporate consolidation” is at the heart of inflation.

Khan: “The FTC is currently in court trying to block the largest grocery merger in U.S. history.”

Great natural experiment here in Cali. Starting July 1, all mandatory hotel fees—resort fees, destination fees, facility fees, cleaning fees, service fees, host fees, and AC fees—must be shown as part of the advertised price. 1/3 If progressives are right, this should intensify competitive pressure, putting downward pressure on the overall bill. And bravo to the NYT reporter who quoted an expert in support of this view. Hope he doesn’t get fired! 2/3

The WSJ editorial board bemoans the FTC’s new merger filing requirements, claiming the lack of any evidence that repeated violations of labor law is indicative of monopsony power. How about a Cornell Law Review article by two of the leading scholars on monopsony power?





The logic here is pretty clear: Workers attempting to unionize are generally trying to countervail buying power. If there were good outside employment options, workers would just leave. Thus, efforts to quash unionization can be understood as attempts to preserve monopsony power.

Now that profits (and not wages) have been established as the key driver of inflation, it might be worth thinking of more subtle, non-price, ways in which firms are exploiting “supply disruptions” and “labor shortages” to exercise power over consumers. THREAD Others have noted that companies are can achieve higher effective prices by reducing the quantity in the package. Another form of #HiddenInflation could take the form of cutting back on services, reducing the quality of the product, and increasing the quality-adjusted price.

I have new piece up on The Sling that summarizes the findings of a new paper of mine, co-authored by Jacob Linger and Ted Tatos, that explores the connection between rental inflation and concentration of ownership of rental properties in Florida. Short 🧵
thesling.org/the-rent-is-to… We used Florida property tax roll data to construct the footprint of property owners in each census tract. Here is an animated map of the South Shore neighborhood of River View from 2015 to 2022. You can see how these five owners built up a cluster of rental properties over time.

And don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out! Does The Economist think Trump’s tariffs on steel, or Trump’s massive subsidy of Covid vaccines were exemplars of laissez faire? Or can only a Democrat reject laissez faire? Newsflash: Laissez faire is dead, and it died long ago. There is no constituency for it, in either party.

The OECD just released a new paper on the nexus between competition and inflation, and the takeaway is that we are making major inroads in the economic debate. 🧵

oecd.org/daf/competitio… The paper spells out all the ways competition could contribute to inflation, including through "feedback effects," such as when inflation is used as pretext or facilitating mechanism by firms in concentrated industries to raise prices further.