The Conflict-of-Interest Discount in the Marketplace of Ideas

We thank Henry Cummins and Jonathan Lee for their excellent research assistance. We also thank Elliott Ash, Jon Baker, Stefan Bechtold, Marianne Bertrand, Adam Chilton, John Ioannidis, Steve Kaplow, Ioannis Lianos, Aviv Nevo, Rupprecht Podzun, Eric Posner, Amit Seru, Alex Stremitzer, Amit Zac, participants in conferences and seminars in Brussels, Chicago, Columbia, ETH Zurich, George Mason, Harvard, Imperial, Mannheim, University of Southern California, and Yale for their very useful comments. The project received approval from the IRBs of the University of Chicago, Imperial College London, ETH Zurich, and The Washington University in St. Louis (UChicago IRB AURA Number - IRB23-1177). The project was also pre-registered on the AEA RCT Registry under the number AEARCTR-0012017 Barrios et al., 2023. Following the AEA and NBER Disclosure Requirements, the authors disclose the following potential conflicts of interest over the past three years: Barrios: No potential conflicts of interest to report; Lancieri: received a research grant from CERRE, a Brussels’ think tank, to engage in research on data access in European Regulations; Levy: No potential conflicts of interest to report; Singh: No potential conflicts of interest to report. Valletti: was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to support his overall research projects; Zingales: is on the advisory board of the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute of the Minneapolis Fed, advises a financial startup called Jurna, produced a report on financial markets competitiveness in Chile commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank, and was compensated for speeches given at different universities and others institutions. You can find Zingales’ full disclosure statement here: https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/faculty/luigi-zingales/vita/disclosure_24.pdf. The authors would like to thank Imperial College London, the Stigler Center at UChicago Booth, and WashU’s Olin Center for Research in Economics and Strategy for financially supporting this research. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.