BFI Student Event – The Transformation of Capitalism
Light snacks will be provided.
BFI’s Student Event Series invites prominent speakers to engage undergraduate and graduate students in discussions on economics. The talks highlight the practical use of economics for answering real-world questions pertinent to businesses and policy makers.
Two hundred fifty years after the Wealth of Nations, capitalism looks very different from Adam Smith’s vision of small producers operating in a decentralized world. Today, giant companies dominate modern economies. In this talk, Professor Yueran Ma examines how the rise of large-scale firms has transformed capitalism. Drawing on centuries of global data, she documents that production has become more concentrated, yet ownership has become more diffuse and top firms continue to constantly rise and fall. The result is a paradoxical system that blends centralization and decentralization, which defies the predictions of both capitalism’s greatest champions and critics.
If you have any questions, please contact bfi-events@uchicago.edu.
Agenda
Welcome and Introduction
Chad Syverson, George C. Tiao Distinguished Service Professor, Booth School of Business, Deputy Director, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics
The Transformation of Capitalism
Yueran Ma, Carhart Family Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School Business, and Co-Director of the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance