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Stephen W. Salant is an economist who has done extensive research in applied microeconomics. His 1975 model of speculative attacks in the gold market was adapted by Paul Krugman and others to explain speculative attacks in foreign exchange markets. Hundreds of journal articles and books on financial speculative attacks followed.
In a series of six articles, Salant has continued to focus instead on real speculative attacks. These may be divided into two categories: speculative attacks induced by government policies such as total allowable catch quotas in fisheries, H1-B immigration quotas, commodity price ceilings, and most recently the proposed price-collars on tradable emissions permits; and speculative attacks that are naturally occurring rather than induced by government policy such as the precipitous depletions of storable common properties.
In industrial organization, he has contributed to the literatures on horizontal mergers, price discrimination, durable goods monopoly, and cartels.
Salant also has a long-standing interest in the Alger Hiss case and has published in that area as well.