Regulation articles from March 22 2009

Regulation archives from March 22 2009

Blocking animal biotech.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
March 22, 2009... On January 15, the Food and Drug Administration announced "final guidance" on its regulatory policy toward "genetically engineered" animals. Typical of the agency's current mindset, the policy tortures the science and opts for the most...

Bankers only listen to laws.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
March 22, 2009... Some government intervention in the marketplace is necessary, but it will only work well if policymakers get the laws right. For confirmation of this, we need only look at the history of banking, where laws that granted limited liability to...

Disaster loan reform waiting to happen.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
March 22, 2009... The Small Business Administration's Disaster Assistance loans are, collectively, the federal government's primary disaster-relief program. The government-financed loans help not just small businesses, but also individuals, businesses of all...

Did the federal drinking age law save lives? In this case, coercive federalism did not improve public welfare.(LAW ENFORCEMENT)
March 22, 2009... In 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, a law that threatened to withhold federal highway funds from states that failed to increase their minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) to 21. Many states objected to...

Lessons from a scalper: deregulated markets punish greed.(REGULATORY REFORM)
March 22, 2009... Greed took a beating during the recent presidential election. Last September 16th, John McCain blamed the financial meltdown on the "greed and mismanagement of Wall Street and Washington." Later that day, Barack Obama took a swing at greed in a...

The fate of Bush's regulatory reforms: what will President Obama do with the tools that he's inherited?(REGULATORY REFORM)
March 22, 2009... President Obama has entered office with the clear intention of altering many policy choices of the previous administration. New policies on Iraq and health care will attract a great deal of public and media attention. Regulatory policies...

The myth of copyright inefficiency: has the standard textbook model been wrong all these years?(PROPERTY)
March 22, 2009... Economic analyses of copyright and patents most often focus on balancing what is known as the incentive/access tradeoff. Intellectual property laws increase incentives for creation by granting an exclusive right to sell copies of the particular...

Discounting the future: is it equitable to favor tomorrow's wealthier generations over today's poorer generations?(ENVIRONMENT)
March 22, 2009... One of the difficulties of analyzing climate change policies is that the costs of greenhouse gas emission reductions would be near-term while any benefits from those reductions would be delayed because of the inertia of the climate system. How...

Is 'Say on Pay' justified? Empirical evidence indicates executives do not have outsized control over their compensation.(CORPORATE GOVERNANCE)
March 22, 2009... In the last Congress, House Financial Services Committee chair Barney Frank introduced H.R. 1257, the "Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act." The Frank bill would amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to provide shareholders with...

The ominous Employee Free Choice Act: this legislation represents a dramatic departure from previous labor law.(LABOR)
March 22, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The history of American labor law, to date, can be broken into two broad periods, animated by fundamentally different world views. The first period was marked by the ascendancy of common law principles, which...

Food for thought.
March 22, 2009... THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA: A Natural History of Four Meals By Michael Pollan 464 pages; Penguin Books, 2007 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There are 38 ingredients in a Chicken McNugget. Thirteen are derived in some part from the...

The return of Jimmy Carter.
March 22, 2009... A DECLARATION OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: How Freedom from Foreign Oil Can Improve National Security, Our Economy, and the Environment By Jay Hakes 252 pages; John Wiley & Sons, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It seemed to me that the...

Power communication.
March 22, 2009... DEREGULATION, INNOVATION AND MARKET LIBERALIZATION: Electricity Regulation in a Continually Evolving Environment By L. Lynne Kiesling 189 pages; Routledge, 2009 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Discontent with the state of the...

Laws trumping laws.
March 22, 2009... THE PREEMPTION WAR: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries By Thomas O. McGarity 368 pages; Yale University Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Preemption" deals with the relationship between state and federal law. A...

Regulating Indiana Jones.
March 22, 2009... WHO OWNS ANTIQUITY? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage By James Cuno 228 pages; Princeton, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Those who read Who Owns Antiquity? hoping for the answer to its titular question will come...

Still-relevant--perhaps more so.
March 22, 2009... THE ROAD TO SERFDOM By Friedrich Hayek 320 pages; University of Chicago Press, 2007 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Why write a review of a book that was first published in 1944? Because it s still relevant today. Friedrich Hayek...

Sawing off the ladder to success.
March 22, 2009... STEALING FROM EACH OTHER: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit By Edgar K. Browning 226 pages; Praeger, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the Sherlock Holmes short story "Silver Blaze," the key to solving the...

Legislating in the courtroom.
March 22, 2009... REGULATION BY LITIGATION By Andrew Morriss, Bruce Yandle, and Andrew Dorchak 282 pages; Yale University Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From time immemorial to the 20th century, litigation was about settling a dispute...

Holding out for a hero.(THE FINAL WORD)
March 22, 2009... America has a new superhero. He can make money appear out of thin air, create bad banks (which, don't worry, are actually good banks) with a wave of his hand, and is friends with a magical Foreclosure Fairy who knows the secret to keeping...