Regulation articles from December 2002

Regulation archives from December 2002

Antitrust's "buck-naked" emperor. (For the Record).
December 22, 2002... GEORGE BITTLINGMAYER'S EXCELlent article "The Antitrust Emperor's Clothes" (Fall 2002) is marred by his unwillingness to conclude that all of the antitrust statutes should be repealed. Bittlingmayer cogently argues that antitrust is corrupted...

What about Patient Power? (For the Record).
December 22, 2002... IT IS DISAPPOINTING THAT H.E. Frech III has allowed his obvious conviction that some entity other than patients themselves should control how their medical care is provided to pervade his article, "The Competitive Revolution" (Summer 2002)....

Correction.
December 22, 2002... In the Fall 2002 issue of Regulation, a layout error led to the accidental omission of part of the final sentence of the article "The Antitrust Emperor's Clothes" (pp. 46-52). The final sentence should have read as follows: More gains are...

Acrylamide. (Mercatus Reports).
December 22, 2002... STATUS: FDA is preparing an action plan Last April, Swedish researchers announced that they had discovered acrylamide, a possible human carcinogen, in an assortment of baked and fried foods. The researchers argued that the chemical is...

National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants. (Mercatus Reports).
December 22, 2002... STATUS: EPA has revised its application requirements In accordance with the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency must set NATIONAL EMISSION STANDARDS FOR HAZARDOUS AIR POLLUTANTS ("NESHAPs") for various industries based on...

SEER 12. (Mercatus Reports).
December 22, 2002... STATUS: Facing court challenge In the waning weeks of the Clinton administration, the Department of Energy attempted to implement new energy conservation standards for central air conditioners and heat pumps. (See "Mercatus Reports,"...

Ragsdale and the Family Medical Leave Act. (Mercatus Reports).
December 22, 2002... STATUS: Department of Labor is analyzing Court decision Last March, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide Inc. -- an important decision in the development of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)....

Patent listings and generic drugs. (Mercatus Reports).
December 22, 2002... STATUS: Comment period for proposed FDA rule closes Dec. 23 As part of President Bush's initiative to improve health care, the Food and Drug Administration issued a proposed rule last October that addresses patent-listing requirement for...

Financial market structure. (Mercatus Reports).
December 22, 2002... STATUS: SEC considering testimony As a result of the recent turmoil in financial markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission held hearings last Oct. 29 and Nov. 12 on optimal financial market structure. The commission heard a variety...

'UPL' lawyer welfare revisited. (Briefly Noted).
December 22, 2002... THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY issue of Regulation included a number of articles that discussed successes in the battle against regulation that stifles competition and restricts consumer choice. One field where there has been little advance...

The dawn of a new spectrum policy? (Briefly Noted).
December 22, 2002... IN WHAT MAY BE A WATERSHED MOMENT IN the history of American telecommunications policy, the Federal Communications Commission's Spectrum Policy Task Force recently released its eagerly awaited report and proposed nothing less than a revolution...

How the Packers lost out: by eschewing market-based prices for PSLs and instead accepting public financing for stadiums, teams are missing a remarkable revenue opportunity. (Sports).
December 22, 2002... A FEW YEARS AGO, THE GREEN BAY Packers decided to renovate their stadium in order to remain competitive in the NFL. They complained that Lambeau Field lacked many of the revenue-generating features that are staples of the newer stadiums, such...

Money to burn? Will the Bush administration's new forest management philosophy diminish the dangers of fire or just increase the Forest Service's budget? (Public Lands).
December 22, 2002... LATE LAST JULY, JERRY AND GAYLE Sorenson were given a "mandatory evacuation order" to leave their home in the Illinois River Canyon of southwest Oregon. The Biscuit Fire, which had doubled in size the previous day, was fast approaching their...

Drug research and price controls: what would happen if the United States adopted other countries' drug price regulations? (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2002... IN THE UNITED STATES, PRESCRIPTION DRUG prices are largely unregulated. That differs from most other countries, where drug prices are regulated either directly through price controls (e.g., France and Italy), indirectly through limits on...

Determining the price of Price-Anderson: what is the cost of federal liability protection for nuclear power? (Energy).
December 22, 2002... THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY HAS ALWAYS been a political "hot potato." Though not always for the same reasons, it has generated distinctly difficult questions for serious policy analysts. We like its promise of cheap, clean electricity, but we do not...

The paralyzing principle: does the Precautionary Principle point us in any helpful direction? (Risk).
December 22, 2002... ALL OVER THE WORLD, THERE IS increasing interest in a simple idea for the regulation of risk: the Precautionary Principle. Simply put, the principle counsels that we should avoid steps that will create a risk of harm; until safety is...

The SEC's other problem: it is time to open the bond rating industry to new entrants. (Securities & Investment).
December 22, 2002... THE U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE Commission currently has its hands full with corporate governance issues and oversight of the accounting industry. Lurking in the background, however, is a different and less well-known problem of SEC regulation...

A role for government? Should the government provide terrorism insurance over the short or long term? (Insurance).
December 22, 2002... THE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON THE United States in September 2001 created chaos in the insurance industry. Insurers immediately refused to sell more than minimal coverage to any airline for ground damage, placing airlines in difficulty with both...

Smoking's 'internalities': given smokers' future preferences, lawmakers should raise cigarette taxes. (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2002... THE PAST SIX YEARS HAVE SEEN AN enormous change in the treatment of smoking by both policymakers and the legal system. In 1995, federal and state excise taxes on cigarettes were one-third lower, in real terms, than their peak level of the...

The new cigarette paternalism: there are better ways to address smoking than ever-increasing cigarette taxes. (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2002... SMOKING IS BY FAR THE LARGEST SINGLE risk that most people take. Perhaps in part because of that prominence, smoking has been the target of a wide variety of regulations and legal actions. The controversy over tobacco products is at least four...

My future self and I. (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2002... UNTIL JONATHAN GRUBER AND BOTOND Koszegi's 2001 NBER paper (of which Gruber's article on pp. 52-57 is an outgrowth), the economic thinking behind cigarette taxes was simple: Government shhould only concern itself wit taxing to cover smoking's...

Less hazardous smokes? (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2002... According to the Institute of Medicine, health policy can do more than counsel to discourage smoking; it can promote the use of low-risk tobacco products for smokers unwilling or unable to quit. CURRENTLY, SOME 50 MILLION AMERICANS, and...

A (generally) welcomed update. (In Review).
December 22, 2002... ALTERNATIVE CURRENTS: Electricity Markets and Public Policy By Timothy J. Brennan, Karen L. Palmer, and Salvador A. Martinez. Washington D.C.: Resources for the Future; 210 pp. In 1996, a six-person team at Resources for the...

A great gag for the airport. (The Final Word).
December 22, 2002... THE FEDS HAVE TAKEN OVER AIRPORT SECURITY. If you want to fly, get ready to run fake safety feel-up. It's become an embarrassing nightmare version of the Beach Boys' "Surf City," except it's "two goons for every boy" (and we're all paying for...