bought in exchange for political capital

That’s a very uncharitable assumption of his motivations.

Dropping out of an (FPTP) primary is like awkward manual runoff voting. Once you clearly aren’t winning, you drop out so those votes can flow to the next preferred candidate.

People voting for Buttigieg switched to Biden because he was the most similar candidate. Of course Buttigieg would support the candidate that best matches his policy preferences – and the preferences of voters.

We find that a 10% minimum wage hike translates into a 0.36% increase in the prices of grocery products. This magnitude is consistent with a full pass-through of cost increases into consumer prices.

Reminds me of the book Beyond the Veil of Stars. People travel between worlds by putting their minds into alien species, some of which are quite foreign (e.g. a rodent with multiple bodies), and folks get pretty messed up.