Regulation articles from September 2005

Regulation archives from September 2005

Urban empowerment zones.
September 22, 2005... STATUS: HUD considering public comment on new EZ criteria. Congress created the Empowerment Zone (EZ) program in 1993 to revitalize communities and alleviate poverty by designating certain communities as eligible for federal incentive...

GSE reform.(MERCATUS REPORTS)
September 22, 2005... STATUS: House bill moving to chamber floor. A U.S. House of Representatives committee recently forwarded to the main body reform legislation for government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), including home loan giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae....

The regulators' growing budget.
September 22, 2005... IN 1978, MURRAY WEIDENBAUM OBSERVED IN this magazine that "government regulation of business is one of the growth areas of the U.S. economy" ("On Estimating Regulatory Costs," May/June 1978). He attempted to measure that growth by examining the...

Replacing stovepipe regulation.
September 22, 2005... AS WE APPROACH THE 10-YEAR. anniversary of passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a broad consensus has emerged that the statute's so-called "stovepipe" regulatory framework is outdated and an impediment to the .. development of sound...

REACH exceeding its grasp?
September 22, 2005... EUROPEAN REGULATORY OFFICIALS seem to regard interference with free markets and hostility to technological innovation as a kind of recreation. The out:: come is often rather like skydiving without a parachute. The latest example is a...

What are private governments worth? Do homeowners associations raise property values?
September 22, 2005... "PRIVATE GOVERNMENTS" SUCH AS HOMEOWNERS associations and condominium cooperatives provide all manner of collective consumption goods, from road maintenance, trash collection, and snow removal to transportation, policing, and medical care....

The new challenge to cost-benefit analysis. How sound is the opponents' empirical case?
September 22, 2005... FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES, BOTH Republican and Democratic presidential administrations have supported the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the review of federal regulatory decisions. And for three decades, both Republican and Democratic...

Defensive medicine and disappearing doctors? Evidence suggests that the malpractice crisis has more complex effects than are commonly assumed.
September 22, 2005... INCREASES IN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE PREMIUMS and malpractice awards to plaintiffs have received considerable attention in recent years. Noting the substantial growth in medical malpractice premiums in certain states, the American Medical...

Directions for the disposition of my (and your) vital organs: now, there is an indisputable cost for continuing the prohibition on organ markets.
September 22, 2005... AFTER SPENDING 16 YEARS URGING legal reform that would permit compensation for organ donation in order to increase the supply of transplant organs, I have decided to reverse course. I will now decrease the supply of organs by one...

Costs and consequences: despite reforms, telecom regulations are still costing consumers billions of dollars.(TELECOMMUNICATIONS & TECHNOLOGY)
September 22, 2005... THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION spent approximately $1.2 billion on telecommunications and broadband regulation in fiscal 2004. Yet the actual cost is more than 60 times that amount. In a Mercatus Center working paper released earlier...

Life support for unaffiliated ISPs? Independent ISPs are asking for government protection in the broadband era.(Internet Service Providers)
September 22, 2005... DURING THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF THE Internet, thousands of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offered dial-up service to dispersed telephone subscribers over traditional telephone lines. Over time, the service became concentrated in a handful of...

Battling the government, the Mafia, and the rest of planet earth.(The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth)(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... THE PAYPAL WARS by Eric M. Jackson 344 pages; Los Angeles, Calif.; World Ahead Publishing, 2004 ONCE UPON A TIME, there existed the Land of the New Economy. It was a place where old rules did not apply and where the suffix".com" was the...

Houses of cards.(Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing, Second Edition )(Book Review)
September 22, 2005... PAYING WITH PLASTIC: THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION IN BUYING AND BORROWING By David Evans and R/chard Schmalensee, 380 pages; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005 A SURE-FIRE CLUE THAT A pre-1985 movie is out of date is not the cars, the slang, or...

Tee'd off.(Editorial)
September 22, 2005... I CAN PUT UP WITH A LOT. MY LAW DEGREE MAY not have landed me a Porsche in the driveway, but it did lead to a high level of tolerance. That allows me to stomach large amounts of government truth-fudging, rule bending, and exercises in futility....