Regulation articles from September 2008

Regulation archives from September 2008

Recasting Morriss's Bootleggers.(FOR THE RECORD)
September 22, 2008... Andrew Morriss's "Bootleggers, Baptists, and Televangelists" (Summer 2008) left me confused. First, Morriss's casting assignments--tobacco companies as bootleggers, regulatory agencies and antismoking groups as Baptists, and the private bar...

Property rights apologia.
September 22, 2008... Alexandra Klass takes the eminent domain reform movement to task for not emphasizing natural resources takings, whereby extractive industries are given the power to condemn land for private enrichment. ("The Frontier of Eminent Domain," Summer...

The 'smart road' scam.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
September 22, 2008... So-called "intelligent transportation systems" (ITS) combine information and communications technologies with vehicles and public infrastructure in order to manage congestion, traffic routing, travel times, and fuel consumption. For years, ITS...

The FCC's $19 billion baby.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
September 22, 2008... The Federal Communications Commission has completed its auction for a big swath of electromagnetic spectrum in the 700 megahertz frequency range that was recently reclaimed from television broadcasters. Who cares, you say? Some heavy corporate...

The energy bill's theft.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
September 22, 2008... NO one has ever accused Hugo Chavez of being a running dog of capitalism. But when the government of Venezuela nationalized the assets of oil companies doing business there, the Chavez regime compensated refiners for taking their property. The...

More forbearance please.(BRIEFLY NOTED)
September 22, 2008... Imagine a world in which Congress's ham-fisted attempts at regulation were never implemented and agencies actively reviewed their rules to remove those that no longer make sense. If that sounds like a regulatory paradise, think again: it's the...

OIRA at midnight.
September 22, 2008... "Midnight regulations" are a regular target of criticism. However, unless you believe that regulation of any kind is always problematic, the fact that regulatory activity increases at the end of a presidential term should not by itself be a...

Legal barriers to innovation: the bar's control over corporate legal markets is growing more costly.(LAW)
September 22, 2008... Few commentators, outside of the practicing bar and the judiciary, find much to recommend the modern system of professional regulation of lawyers. Legal scholars concerned about access to justice have often been scathing about what they...

Clearing up misconceptions on clearing: vertical integration of clearing and execution may produce considerable efficiency benefits.(SECURITIES & EXCHANGE)
September 22, 2008... Clearing--a centralized mechanism for confirming and guaranteeing trades in securities and derivatives markets--is often likened to the plumbing of the financial system: it is ignored when it works, and can cause serious problems when it...

The value of 'cooling off': do stakeholders worry when firms hire members of the independent audit team?(CORPORATE GOVERNANCE)
September 22, 2008... Firms often find it both efficient and effective to hire accounting overseers who have previously served as members of the firm's external audit engagement team. For example, a company's external audit manager may be an appropriate controller...

Big yards or green space? Buying patterns suggest homebuyers prefer their open space to be close to home.(REAL ESTATE)
September 22, 2008... In many communities, particularly those on the urban-rural fringe, most housing is located in subdivisions. Increasingly, those developments are subject to "clustering" rules in which houses must be located on a portion of the total land and...

A looming policy disaster: a sustained, critical look at climate change economics and science is long overdue.(ENVIRONMENT)
September 22, 2008... After decades of activism by environmentalists, American policymakers are embracing the notion that climate change is a serious problem and that the United States must take action to lower greenhouse gas emissions. In 2006, California governor...

Global warming: correcting the data: surface temperatures are rising, but probably not as quickly as is claimed.(ENVIRONMENT)
September 22, 2008... All historical temperature records agree: the planet is warmer than it was. But those histories are subject to a number of biases, some of which are obvious while others are very subtle. The most obvious bias is that weather stations in cities...

Solving the world's problems.
September 22, 2008... WHY POPCORN COSTS SO MUCH AT THE MOVIES: And Other Pricing Puzzles By Richard McKenzie 328 pages; Copernicus Books, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Have you ever wondered why the price of movie theater popcorn is so high,...

Reconsidering victimless crime.
September 22, 2008... PROHIBITIONS Edited by John Meadowcroft 269 pages; Institute of Economic Affairs, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In one of those timeless "Peanuts" cartoons, Lucy frowns and holds up a sign reading "Help stamp out things that...

A modest offering.
September 22, 2008... THE BEST BOOK ON THE MARKET: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Economy by Eamonn Butler 160 pages; Capstone, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Whatever else you can accuse British economist Eamonn Butler of, modesty is not on...

Unpleasant truths behind the 'myth'.
September 22, 2008... THE LAWYER MYTH: A Defense of the American Legal Profession by Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read 152 pages; Swallow Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1999, a book entitled Approaching the Qur'an: the Early Revelations...

Food apartheid.(THE FINAL WORD)
September 22, 2008... This past summer, Los Angeles decided to get tough. The L.A. City Council put a moratorium on fast food joints in South Los Angeles, stopping them from opening any new stores in the area's poor neighborhoods for at least one year. When the deed...