Regulation articles from June 2007

Regulation archives from June 2007

Politics and bank regulation.(FOR THE RECORD)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2007... I am grateful to Peter Wallison for writing his recent, provocative piece "Banking Regulation's Illusive Quest" (Spring 2007), which contains a lengthy response to an earlier article of mine in the Yale Journal on Regulation (Vol. 23, No. 1)...

Bank Regulation and Basel I.(FOR THE RECORD)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2007... I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Wallison's recent article "Banking Regulation's Illusive Quest." I believe there is significant evidence, however, to support the argument that in at least one major area bank capital regulation, as solidified by the...

Ignoring secondhand smoke's risk.(FOR THE RECORD)(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2007... Dr. Tom Lambert ("The Case against Smoking Bans," Winter 2006-2007), Dr. Gio Gori ("Stoking the Rigid Terror of Secondhand Smoke," Spring 2007), and others miss two important issues about "secondhand" cigarette smoke. First, there is no...

Mercatus reports.(Brief article)
June 22, 2007... The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is an education, research, and outreach organization that works with scholars, policy experts, and government officials to bridge academic theory and real-world practice. The center's Regulatory...

Universal phone service.(MERCATUS REPORTS)(Telecommunications Act of 1996)
June 22, 2007... The federal Universal Service Fund subsidizes telecommunications providers that serve high-cost rural areas, low-income consumers, and some schools and hospitals. In May, the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service recommended that the...

Subprime mortgage lending.(MERCATUS REPORTS)
June 22, 2007... Should "borrowers beware" of subprime mortgages, which lead to "an endangered dream" of homeownership, as headlines in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal recently said? Or is "debt once again miscast as the villain," as a New York...

Uncorking e-commerce: update.(MERCATUS REPORTS)
June 22, 2007... Ever since the Supreme Court's June 2005 decision in Granholm v. Heald, states have struggled to implement the Court's mandate that they not treat in-state direct wine shipments differently from out-of-state shipments. The case arose because...

Bootleggers, Baptists, and Tobacco Regulation.(MERCATUS REPORTS: COMMENTARY)
June 22, 2007... Members of both houses of Congress have introduced identical bills to include tobacco under the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory umbrella. FDA chairman Andrew yon Eschenbach opposes this legislation. Altria, the largest U.S. cigarette...

'Protecting consumers' by raising gas prices?(BRIEFLY NOTED)
June 22, 2007... Under "zone pricing," gasoline distributors charge different wholesale prices--known in industry parlance as the Dealer Tank Wagon (DTW) price--to service stations in different areas. Legislators in Connecticut and some other states have...

Strangling the goose that lays the golden drugs.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
June 22, 2007... There is an old saying in Washington that when something has been repeated three times, it becomes a fact. The saying's most recent application is the supposed shortcomings in the safety of prescription drugs. The reality is that although all...

Evolution and envy.(BRIEFLY NOTED)(income inequality forecasted)
June 22, 2007... It is impossible to pick up a newspaper today without reading about increasing income inequality. Even in the Wall Street Journal, through February 26 of this year, a search shows 47 articles--about one per publishing day--dealing with the...

The double standard environmental science: can science abide political causes?(ENVIRONMENT)
June 22, 2007... 'Everyone knows that soil erosion is a U.S. crisis. This study can't be right." That statement is a paraphrase of a reviewer's comments on a paper on greatly declining rates of U.S. soil erosion that I submitted to the journal Science in 1982....

The rise and decline of unions: unions are a corporatist institution, and as such they cannot prosper in a competitive economy.(LABOR)
June 22, 2007... Union membership, as a percentage of the private sector workforce, has been in decline for 50 years. The cause of this unrelenting decline is a single, fundamental factor: the change in the United States economy from a corporatist-regulated...

The fairness of malpractice settlements: contrary to conventional wisdom, the adjudication process appears to treat physicians well.(HEALTH & MEDICINE)
June 22, 2007... Critics of medical malpractice litigation charge that the current system is nothing more than a judicial "lottery' in which the odds of a generous settlement payment are unrelated to the quality of care actually provided by the defendant...

Net neutrality: a radical form of non-discrimination: regulators should not interfere with the "coming exoflood.".(TELECOMMUNICATIONS & TECHNOLOGY)
June 22, 2007... Despite the fact that the current net neutrality debate has drawn the attention of many academics and consultants, it is hard to find a precise definition in the literature of what "net neutrality" means. In layman's terms, net neutrality is...

The pathologies of Institutional Review Boards: are IRBs the "least worst" way to promote research ethics?(RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT)
June 22, 2007... Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) are polarizing institutions. IRB supporters view them as the best thing since sliced bread. Detractors believe IRBs impose costs and have no benefits. Supporters point to the good faith and hard work of those...

The anti-constitutional culture of class action law: an expected Supreme Court case involving Wal-Mart may radically alter the American legal landscape.(LAW)
June 22, 2007... The culture of class action law discourages constitutional scrutiny of class action litigation. But that culture is fraying. The Supreme Court may pull the thread that unravels it in Dukes v. Wal-Mart, a mammoth sex discrimination class action....

Recharging electricity deregulation.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... ELECTRIC CHOICES: Deregulation and the Future of Electric Power Edited by Andrew N. Kleit 242 pages; Independent Institute and Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 For many people living in the northeast, August 14, 2003 was a day nearly as...

Freaking out.(Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health!)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... ECO-FREAKS: Environmentalism Is Hazardous for Your Health! By John Berlau 250 pages; Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson Current, 2006 Even people who sympathize with the environmental movement worry about the current proliferation of environmental...

Healing an ailing market.(The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care)(Book review)
June 22, 2007... THE CURE: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care By David Gratzer 325 pages; New York, N.Y.: Encounter Books, 2006 After a hiatus of a dozen years, health care reform is back on the U.S. policy agenda. Health care systems are...

Looking out for our four-footed friends.(THE FINAL WORD)
June 22, 2007... When at least 16 pet dogs and cats died after eating contaminated pet food last April, people started to ask questions. Questions like, how could this happen? Who s watching over the pet food manufacturers? And why don't more things in life...