Regulation articles from March 2005

Regulation archives from March 2005

The roots of our insecurity.(FOR THE RECORD)(Letter to the Editor)
March 22, 2005... I think the overall point of John Mueller's "A False Sense of Insecurity" (Fall 2004) is right on, but he left out some of the societal "hows" and "whys" that explain how we got to this state of insecurity. The new pop culture ideals that...

Regulation Z.(MERCATUS REPORTS)
March 22, 2005... STATUS: Federal Reserve comment period closes March 28. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors recently announced that it is beginning a review process of the revolving credit disclosure requirements of its Regulation Z. The regulation...

Cooling water intake.(MERCATUS REPORTS)
March 22, 2005... STATUS: EPA comment period closes March 24. The Environmental Protection Agency has been working for the last few years to reduce the amount of fish killed or injured when water is used for cooling purposes at energy, manufacturing, and...

ESA permit revocation.(MERCATUS REPORTS)(Endangered Species Act)
March 22, 2005... STATUS: In effect as of January 10. When Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, it broadly prohibited the "taking" (killing or harming) of listed species. The prohibition created disincentives for landowners to conserve...

What's next for telecom?(MERCATUS REPORTS: COMMENTARY)
March 22, 2005... ON THE SAME DECEMBER DAY THAT THE D.C. City Council said taxpayers would not simply give Major League Baseball a new stadium in the nation's capital, the Federal Communications Commission announced its new rules governing the "unbundling" of...

Corporate social responsibility--or good advertising?(BRIEFLY NOTED)
March 22, 2005... IN THE UNITED STATES, CORPORATE MANAGERS are fiduciary agents for a firm's owners--the shareholders. Those managers should act in the interest of the shareholders by maximizing the returns of the company. Despite that responsibility to the...

Accountability and private governments: do homeowners' associations lower property values?(PROPERTY)
March 22, 2005... IN A PAIR OF RECENT REGULATION ARTICLES, Robert Nelson and William Fischel discuss the emergence of private residential community associations (RCAS) as suppliers of services that historically have been provided by local government. (See "The...

A tale of two clams: actors' strategic anticipation of policy change has led to overstatements of the benefits of ITQs.(NATURAL RESOURCES)(individual transferable quotas)
March 22, 2005... IN OPEN-ACCESS FISHERIES, INDIVIDUAl. FISHermen give little thought to the effects of their harvest on the total available stock. That results in endemic excessive fishing. To limit such behavior, federal fisheries have historically been...

Architectural censorship and the FCC: efforts to regulate the media threaten quantity, quality, and diversity.(TELECOMMUNICATIONS)(Federal Communications Commission)
March 22, 2005... FIRST AMENDMENT ANALYSES OF MEDIA regulation have long focused on government efforts to influence media content directly, either by imposing restrictions on disfavored speech (such as indecency,) or by mandating carriage of favored speech (such...

Against ISP liability: do ISPs have a duty to protect the world?(TELECOMMUNICATIONS & TECHNOLOGY)(Internet Service Providers)
March 22, 2005... A signal benefit of tort rules developed at common law is how efficiently they apportion responsibility for protections from harm. But efficiency alone does not qualify a proposed rule to be law. In "Holding Internet Service Providers...

Corporate governance and economic development: U.S.-style corporate governance may be a poor fit for the developing world.(CORPORATE GOVERNANCE)
March 22, 2005... POLICYMAKERS CAN CHOOSE FROM TWO competing models of corporate governance. The first is a market-oriented model that relies on relatively little mandatory law to protect shareholders. Instead, it depends on a host of other formal and informal...

Wall street in the third world? Corporate ownership may be a more important issue in developing countries than corporate governance.(CORPORATE GOVERNANCE)
March 22, 2005... EXPERTS FROM DEVELOPED COUNTRIES often give advice to developing countries about the policies, laws, and institutions that are needed to promote economic development. A frequent problem with their advice, however, is that the experts only...

Terrorism Insurance 2005: where do we go from here?(INSURANCE)
March 22, 2005... ALTHOUGH NUMEROUS EFFORTS HAVE been undertaken during the last three years to prevent new terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, the economic impact of another large-scale attack has to be considered seriously. Who should pay for future losses so as...

Speak not of error: does legal fear increase the risk of medical error?(HEALTH & MEDICINE)
March 22, 2005... THE UNITED STATES IS CURRENTLY IN THE midst of its third medical malpractice crisis in 30 years. The story is all too familiar: Insurance premiums spike, prompting demoralized doctors to protest that they are unfairly being victimized by...

States of Fear.(The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution )(book)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... THE FRANKENFOOD MYTH: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution By Henry 1. Miller and Gregory Conko 230 pages; Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2004 MICHAEL CRICHTON'S State of Fear may make a better movie, but...

A coddling CEA?(Council of Economic Advisors)(Painting the White House Green: Rationalizing Environmental Policy Inside the Executive Office of the President)(book)(Book Review)
March 22, 2005... PAINTING THE WHITE HOUSE GREEN: Rationalizing Environmental Policy Inside the Executive Office of the President Edited by Randall Lutter and Jason F. Shogren 205 pages; Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 2004 CAN BETTER...

Misdiagnosing manager power.
March 22, 2005... PAY WITHOUT PERFORMANCE: THE UNFULFILLED PROMISE OF EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION By Lucian Bebchuk and Jesse Fried Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004 LUCIAN BEBCHUCK AND Jesse Fried's book Pay without Performance is based on a...

Section 8.2 housing?(THE FINAL WORD)
March 22, 2005... IN ANSWER TO A "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION" on its Web site, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helpfully starts out: "If a family lives in a public housing unit that is scheduled to be demolished...." Bummer. If there's...