Hal Singer

Why Did Hotel Rates Surge in Vegas? (Hint: It’s Wasn’t the Demand) - The Sling If I had a dollar for every New York Times business story that attributed an industry-wide price hike in the post-Covid era to an outward shift in demand—that is, a story that blamed consumers for hig...

I am on a mission to get the business press to stop blaming consumers for industrywide price hikes, and instead look at the companies actually setting prices. Or in the case of Vegas hotels, companies turning over their pricing decisions to a common pricing agent.

www.thesling.org/why-did-hote...

Opinion | The W.N.B.A. Is Making More Money Than Ever. Why Aren’t the Players? (Gift Article) Other professional sports leagues give their players roughly 50 percent of the revenue, but the W.N.B.A. players get less than 10 percent.

Wrote this for the New York Times today (hope this link works!)

W.N.B.A. is doing immensely well! Time to pay the players!!

Thanks to Sara Chodosh for asking me to write this (helping with the writing) and making the cool graphics!!

urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

What could a proposed Rail Merger mean for Shippers in Montana? - Voices of Montana What Could a Proposed Rail Merger Mean for Shippers in Montana? Join guest host Steve Arveschouh for an insightful discussion on how the potential merger between two of the top six Class 1 rail transp...

Had the pleasure to speak on Voices of Montana today about the harms of consolidation generally & the pending UP-Norfolk Southern railroad merger in particular. If you’re following this case, or just curious about how the merger will be evaluated, go check it out!
voicesofmontana.com/podcast/what...

Standing with Small Business in the Fight for a Fair Economy - The Sling To reclaim our democracy from oligarchs and billionaires, we need to build a system that working people can believe in. That means reshaping an economy that is insurmountably stacked against working p...

New on The Sling:
Seth Frotman writes about the common interest of small business, workers, and consumers: Fighting corporate abuse.

Check it out!

www.thesling.org/standing-wit...

DDC Judge Sooknanan rightfully blocked the FTC’s CID to @mmfa.bsky.social as unconstitutional. The opinion is worth a read ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

No, The Tunney Act Won’t Save Democracy - The Sling Is there a problem with Paramount making a major settlement with Trump and firing Colbert and then having its merger with Skydance approved? We’ll never know, because the courts will only review the c...

Darren Bush writes about the history of the Tunney Act. And while not all of the cases are in the DC Circuit, the vast majority are, and other circuits rely on DC Circuit caselaw and experience.

Only one Tunney Act consent decree rejection. Ever.

www.thesling.org/no-the-tunne...

Prior Authorization: A Consolidated PBM Nightmare - The Sling On December 3, 2024, Chris Salinas officially entered a nightmare that would make Freddy Krueger proud—a nightmare in the medical industry known as prior authorization. Even I, as his gastroenterologi...

PBM Nightmare! Venu Julapalli, a practicing gastroenterologist and recent UH Law grad, writes about PBMs, gives a concrete example of the health nightmares PBM consolidation has created.

Check it out:

www.thesling.org/prior-author...

The Abundance Movement’s Blindside: How Economic Concentration Fuels Political Capture in the Post-Citizens United Era - The Sling There is intense debate between Neo-Brandeisians, antitrust centrists, and supply-side “abundance” liberals, regarding the economic benefits and political dangers of concentrated markets and dominant ...

Randy Kim's latest in the Sling: "The Abundance Movement’s Blindside: How Economic Concentration Fuels Political Capture in the Post-Citizens United Era."

Adding to the abundance of failures in the abundance movement.

Check it out!

www.thesling.org/the-abundanc...

The Trump Administration Should Tap the Brakes on the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Merger - The Sling Railroad mergers haven’t happened in a while, and that’s a good thing. During the Reagan era, the country witnessed a rapid consolidation of its railroad industry. In the two decades following the 198...

Choo choo! Choo choo!
Choo choo!
Choo!
-- History of Train mergers

In The Sling, @halsinger.bsky.social explains why "The Trump Administration Should Tap the Brakes on the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Merger"

Check it out!

www.thesling.org/the-trump-ad...

Will give it a read!

Warning: To prebut arguments from defenders of price-discrimination, I used figures and basic welfare concepts. Apologies in advance.

Delta’s execs told us this month that the AI-based strategy is *increasing* unit revenues. That really should end the debate on output effects.

Delta’s AI-Based Personalized Pricing Is Bad for Flyers. It Should Probably Be Banned. - The Sling If there’s any doubt on the price effects from AI-based pricing, recall the boast from Delta’s executive—unit revenues are rising, which can’t happen if Delta is using the technology to drop prices on...

If Delta were implementing AI-based personalized pricing on its own, that would be bad for travelers. That Delta is using a common algorithm from an GenAI airline pricing consultant makes it even worse. My latest here:

www.thesling.org/deltas-ai-ba...

Major League Baseball Owners Are Agitating (Again) for a Salary Cap. This Isn’t Good News for Players. - The Sling Why do owners want a salary cap? The spending by teams like the Dodgers does bid up the cost of free agents. If the league could cap spending, players would generally be cheaper. And that would transf...

www.thesling.org/major-league...
My latest for The Sling is a classic story!

Nearly 20 years ago, we argued in The Wages of Wins that baseball doesn't need salary controls because money can't buy happiness.

And here we are again!

Good to be playing the old favorites!

@halsinger.bsky.social

Microsoft Says AI Has Boosted Worker Productivity. Their Pay Doesn’t Reflect It. - The Sling A recent working paper authored by Microsoft researchers and academics analyzes the productivity increases in (non-terminated) software developers who use AI tools. The authors find that developers us...

I have a new piece up at @theslingutah.bsky.social, co-authored with Gavin Sicard, that examines whether Big Tech and Microsoft in particular has shared any of the AI-based productivity gains with its workers in the form of higher wages. Lots of cool graphs.

www.thesling.org/microsoft-sa...

Slingshot Episode 23 - The Sling Hal and Darren discuss remedies in the Google search case with AELP’s Laurel Kilgour.

Are divestitures a bad thing?

@halsinger.bsky.social and Darren Bush brought
@econliberties.bsky.social's Laurel Kilgour onto the podcast to discuss this issue plus other remedies on the table in the Google search antitrust case.

www.thesling.org/video/slings...

Go give it a watch!

It's Not the Flu, Feed, or Fuel. Profiteering Is Driving Record Egg Prices. - The Sling A deep dive into the data reveals that the avian bird flu and rising input costs are not driving egg prices. The culprit is profiteering.

In that interview @halsinger.bsky.social mentioned @basel.bsky.social who wrote about the egg issue in 2023.
www.thesling.org/its-not-the-...

DOJ investigating major egg producers amid soaring prices: Sources The Justice Department is in the early stages of investigating the major egg producers over soaring egg prices, source familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Something strange happened after the DOJ launched an antitrust investigation into the egg industry…
1/5

Did DOJ’s Investigation of the Egg Industry Cause Egg Prices to Fall? - The Sling Last September, then vice-presidential candidate JD Vance proclaimed in a Pennsylvanian supermarket, “Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now a dozen eggs will cost you…

That’s not a coincidence. Economist @halsinger.bsky.social has just co-written a piece explaining how corporate behavior changes the moment regulators start to investigate.
3/5

The authors thank @basel.bsky.social and @tedtatos.bsky.social for these excellent comments. The piece is much better with their feedback!

The piece concludes with a call for a more formalized investigation process. Rather than responding to press stories, the DOJ should adopt a policy under which industry inquiries are *automatically* triggered whenever prices in an industry exceed some multiple of CPI.

We draw support from the economic literature, which highlights how prior investigations under FDR led to massive price declines in the industries under investigation.

We make the case here that the initiation of the DOJ investigation may have altered the pricing behavior of major egg producers. After all, the first rule of any conspiracy is to stop conspiring while under the microscope of an investigation.

Other groups, including @FarmActionUS, pursued more nefarious explanations. After all, it would not be the first time for the egg industry. In 2023, a jury held Cal-Maine and other egg producers liable for participating in a price-fixing scheme running from 1999 to 2008.

The mainstream media, egged on by egg industry lobbyists, pointed to a one main culprit for rising egg prices—the bird flu.

Here are some examples from the Washington Post.

Did DOJ’s Investigation of the Egg Industry Cause Egg Prices to Fall? - The Sling Last September, then vice-presidential candidate JD Vance proclaimed in a Pennsylvanian supermarket, “Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now a dozen eggs will cost you ...

In a new piece co-authored with Econ One’s Gavin Sicard, we explore whether DOJ’s inquiry into the egg industry, as reported by Capitol Forum on March 6, may have caused egg prices to plummet. If so, the implications would be big.

Highlights coming.

www.thesling.org/did-dojs-inv...

Did DOJ’s Investigation of the Egg Industry Cause Egg Prices to Fall? - The Sling Last September, then vice-presidential candidate JD Vance proclaimed in a Pennsylvanian supermarket, “Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now a dozen eggs will cost you ...

full thread on this over on xitter by @halsinger.bsky.social

www.thesling.org/did-dojs-inv...

And while the price gouging was taking place, you had the federal government withdrawing pandemic support programs and tge federal reserve jacking up interest rates.
Because everybody was listening to goddamn Larry Summers give economic counsel while vacationing in his beach shirt.

So with all the rigamaroll I my life these days, I got to finish that @halsinger.bsky.social @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social podcast:
bsky.app/profile/pitc...

where I learned a couple of things.
One - Hal talked to the Biden admin, and gave them advice. They just forgot to take it.

Why Big Oil and Big Tech Are Big Fans of Abundance - The Sling Why would Trump, who received nearly $100 million from fossil fuel interests during the 2024 election cycle, encourage unlimited dirty energy production even though it could hurt the oil industry’s bo...

NEW: Why Big Oil and Big Tech Are Big Fans of Abundance

Trump’s unbridling of AI, crypto, and dirty energy should be understood as one inseparable process.

Big Tech has thrown Big Oil & Gas a lifeline by fabricating speculative justifications for fossil fuel expansion. ⬇️

Skip the Spending Plans. Head Directly to Government Jobs. - The Sling Aside from garnering votes, a jobs program would build human capital for workers to deploy in their future work in private or public sector. A jobs program critically would shift power balance in labo...

New piece by @halsinger.bsky.social: the next Democratic campaign should focus on the replacement of lost government jobs and the creation of new government jobs, not government spending.

Check it out!

www.thesling.org/skip-the-spe...