Regulation articles from December 2008

Regulation archives from December 2008

Ethanol 2.0.
December 22, 2008... For almost a decade now, some people have held up biofuels (such as corn-based ethanol) as providing a pathway to energy independence. Congress has instituted subsidies to bring that vision to fruition. Recent empirical work has called both...

An accountability agenda.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
December 22, 2008... The 2008 financial crisis has propelled politicians in both political parties to call for increased regulation. Democrats wave a bloody shirt called "deregulation" the way 19th-century Republicans blamed Democrats for the Civil War. President...

Doctors for gun control.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
December 22, 2008... Just weeks after the Supreme Court issued its blockbuster opinion in the landmark Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller, two prominent medical journals were in print with an editorial and two articles asserting that guns at home...

Harming patients' condition.(drug prescriptions)
December 22, 2008... One of the cornerstones of American medicine is the flexibility of physicians to prescribe drugs for "off-label" uses that have not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, the prescriptions are based on doctors' reading...

Legislating life's value.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
December 22, 2008... Back in 2005, the White House Council on Environmental Quality was roundly criticized for censoring government scientists' latest warnings about climate change. Republicans, it was claimed, were breaching a carefully preserved wall between...

Warming up to water markets: will global warming force us to adopt sensible resource policies?(NATURAL RESOURCES)
December 22, 2008... Ensuring access to quality water supplies is among the most pressing environmental policy challenges of the 21st century, and not just in the developing world. In the United States, demographic changes and existing water use patterns have...

Of patents and property: with some important exceptions, empirical evidence suggests patent protection reduces innovation.(PROPERTY)
December 22, 2008... There is property, and then there is property. Scholars hotly debate whether intellectual property is truly property and which lessons learned about property rights in land should be applied to property rights in inventions and other...

Reshaping the playing field? Will investor activism change corporate governance and benefit shareholders?(CORPORATE GOVERNANCE)
December 22, 2008... In recent years, there have been a number of efforts to extend the shareholder franchise. The major stock exchanges, for example, have implemented new listing standards expanding the number of corporate compensation plans that must be approved...

The single-license solution: instead of federal chartering, states should compete with each other to produce efficient insurance regulation.(INSURANCE)
December 22, 2008... State regulation of insurance companies has been criticized for many years. Forcing firms to comply with regulations that differ from state to state increases costs, limits product innovation and rate competition, and inhibits companies from...

The clearinghouse cure: would this derivates market reform provide the silver bullet for systemic risk?(FINANCE)
December 22, 2008... Credit Default Swaps (CDSS) are casting an enormous shadow over the world's crisis-plagued financial markets--as in $50 trillion-plus enormous (although the exact meaning of this oft-quoted figure is somewhat contentious). CDSs were not the...

Reforming Fannie and Freddie: if policymakers will not fully privatize the GSEs, then they should spin off their retained portfolios.(FINANCE)(Company overview)
December 22, 2008... There is a growing consensus that Congress and the new Obama administration should give a very high priority to determining the proper long-term regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Federal...

Novel economics.(The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity By Russell Roberts 203 pages; Princeton University Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Have you ever wanted to give a friend a book that explains the main...

A chronicle of Coinage.(Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... GOOD MONEY: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821 By George Selgin 345 pages; Independent Institute and University of Michigan Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I am...

Learning to live with bubbles.(The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... THE SUBPRIME SOLUTION: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It By Robert J. Shiller 178 pages; Princeton University Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Compared with most economists, Yale...

Ending welfare as we (now) know it.
December 22, 2008... Back in 1996, Bill Clinton got tough on welfare. By signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, he helped millions of Americans move from dysfunctional dependence on government largesse to autonomy and...