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Global Climate Policy Will Have Net Benefits Larger Than Anyone Thinks (And Welfare Gains, Strangely, Are Likely To Be Much Larger Yet), Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

As with other public goods lacking strong special interest support, global climate policy suffers from two serious theoretical flaws. The first is failure to endogenize the labor-leisure decision when conducting benefit-cost analysis. Recognition that income generated will not remain the same pre-and-post policy results in downward bias in benefit estimation. Much more importantly, there will generally be free riding in input markets in addition to the well-known output demand revelation problem. Since even households with very high marginal values cannot individually increment public goods, too little income will be generated and too much of the income that is generated will …

United Nations Peacekeeping And The Duration Of Post-Civil Conflict Peace, Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, Megan Shannon

Megan Shannon

How do the qualities of United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) influence the duration of peace after civil wars? Recent work shows that UN peacekeeping extends the duration of peace. However, this work has only been able to assess whether the presence or absence of UN missions affects post-conflict peace processes. Such analyses offer little in the way of policy prescriptions for planning and structuring PKOs to effectively pursue their goals. By employing fine-grained data on the personnel composition of PKOs, and generating expectations from rationalist bargaining models of civil war, we argue that the number and type of personnel deployed …

Recent California Water Year Precipitation Deficits: A 440-Year Perspective, Henry F. Diaz

Henry F. Diaz

An analysis of the October 2013–September 2014 precipitation in the western United States and in particular over the California–Nevada region suggests this anomalously dry season, while extreme, is not unprecedented in comparison with the approximately 120-yr-long instrumental record of water year (WY; October–September) totals and in comparison with a 407-yr WY precipitation reconstruction dating back to 1571. Over this longer period, nine other years are known or estimated to have been nearly as dry or drier than WY 2014. The 3-yr deficit for WYs 2012–14, which in California exceeded the annual mean precipitation, is more extreme but also not unprecedented, …

Preventing Perpetuity: Ensuring Clean Mine Closure Without Water Treatment Into Infinity, Nicholas Clabbers

Nicholas Clabbers

Mine closure is a pressing environmental problem. Done improperly, mine closure can leave behind an ugly legacy of water and soil pollution from heavy metals and mining byproducts. Many scientific studies that attempt to quantify and explain the impacts of mine closure, both the formal legal and policy analysis, are sparse, especially with regards to proposed solutions. This article fills that gap – it provides an overview of the legal barriers to clean mine closure, a survey of existing law, and a thorough analysis of a possible framework for improved mine remediation. It advances practical solutions and works through the …

How To Do Things With Hohfeld, Pierre Schlag

Pierre Schlag

This article provides a comprehensive account of Hohfeld's 1913 article on jural relations and draws out some crucial critical, political, and economic implications. Hohfeld's "platform" is presented as an important contribution to contemporary legal thought and as a powerful antidote for common legal reasoning errors.

Collaborative Resilience To Episodic Shocks And Surprises: A Very Long-Term Case Study Of Zanjera Irrigation In The Philippines 1979–2010, Bruce Evan Goldstein, Ruth Yabes

Bruce Evan Goldstein

This thirty-year case study uses surveys, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis to examine the adaptive capacity of Zanjera San Marcelino, an indigenous irrigation management system in the northern Philippines. This common pool resource (CPR) system exists within a turbulent social-ecological system (SES) characterized by episodic shocks such as large typhoons as well as novel surprises, such as national political regime change and the construction of large dams. The Zanjera nimbly responded to these challenges, although sometimes in ways that left its structure and function substantially altered. While a partial integration with the Philippine National Irrigation Agency was critical to the …

Beyond Keeping Peace: United Nations Effectiveness In The Midst Of Fighting, Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, Megan Shannon

Megan Shannon

No abstract provided.

Bargaining Power And The Arbitration And Adjudication Of Territorial Claims, Stephen E. Gent, Megan Shannon

Megan Shannon

No abstract provided.

Ngos, Political Protest, And Civil Society, Carew E. Boulding

Carew E Boulding

This book argues that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have an important effect on political participation in the developing world. Contrary to popular belief, they promote moderate political participation through formal mechanisms such as voting only in democracies where institutions are working well. This is a radical departure from the bulk of the literature on civil society that sees NGOs and other associations as playing a role in strengthening democracy wherever they operate. Instead, Carew Boulding shows that where democratic institutions are weak, NGOs encourage much more contentious political participation, including demonstrations, riots, and protests. Except in extreme cases of poorly functioning …

Political Competition And Local Social Spending: Evidence From Brazil, Carew E. Boulding, David Brown

Carew E Boulding

Electoral theories of democracy imply electoral competition insures accountability. Using data on local elections, socioeconomic factors, and municipal budgets from more than 5,000 municipalities in Brazil for the years 1996, 2000, and 2004, we find that municipalities with more competitive elections allocate less to social spending compared to municipalities with little political competition. We argue that previous theory on political competition and public goods obscures the critical role that financial resources play in shaping the dynamics of social spending and political competition. Municipalities with small budgets lack the resources necessary to engineer convincing electoral victories. Where resources are negligible, voter …

A Provocative Defense, Aya Gruber

Aya Gruber

It is common wisdom that the provocation defense is, quite simply, sexist. For decades, there has been a trenchant feminist critique that the doctrine reflects and reinforces masculine norms of violence and shelters brutal domestic killers. The critique is so prominent that it appears alongside the doctrine itself in leading criminal law casebooks. The feminist critique of provocation embodies several claims about provocation's problematically gendered nature, including that the defense is steeped in chauvinist history, treats culpable sexist killers too leniently, discriminates against women, and expresses bad messages. This article offers a (likely provocative) defense of the provocation doctrine. While …

Civil Society And Support For The Political System In Times Of Crisis, Carew E. Boulding, Jami Nelson-Nunez

Carew E Boulding

How does civil society affect support for the political system during times of political crises? Some argue that civil society strengthens support for political systems by increasing trust and participation. Yet recent scholarship demonstrates that civil society can also facilitate mobilization and dissent, which may undermine support for the political system especially in times of crisis. We test these competing claims using individual level data from a country in the midst of a major political crisis: Bolivia in 2004. We find that membership in civil society organizations leads to higher levels of diffuse support for the political system even during …

A Note On Monitoring Costs And Voter Fraud, Philip E. Graves, Robert L. Sexton, Gary Galles

PHILIP E GRAVES

Election fraud can threaten democracy if many ineligible people are allowed to vote. The usual policy prescription is to increase monitoring cost. However, this is very costly. This paper proposes a more cost effective strategy: substitute tougher and consistent statutes across states against voter fraud.

The Critical Difference Between Republicans/Conservatives And Democrats/Liberals, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

There are, of course, a great many specific differences between the political positions of the two dominant political parties in America. After an introductory section characterizing those, section two suggests that the demarcation of critical importance between the parties relates to how they view the income distribution. Those self-identifying as Republican/Conservative tend to view the income distribution as an artifact of a host of individual work/leisure decisions with little policy relevance; those characterizing themselves as Democrat/Liberal tend to view the income distribution as a pure public good—in this view, private sector outcomes are expected to provide a non-optimally small amount …

Productive Complements: Too Often Neglected In The Principles Course?, Gary Galles, Philip E. Graves, Robert L. Sexton

PHILIP E GRAVES

Many great economic thinkers, including Alfred Marshall and William Stanley Jevons discussed the importance of joint production, or productive complements, and there are important applications. Yet many students today could complete an economics major and never be introduced to this important concept.

Coase Minus The Coase Theorem--Some Problems With Chicago Transaction Cost Analysis, Pierre Schlag

Pierre Schlag

In law as well as economics, the most well-known aspect of Coase’s “The Problem of Social Cost,” is the Coase Theorem. Over the decades, that particular notion has morphed into a crucial component of Chicago law and economics—namely, transaction cost analysis. In this Article, I deliberately bracket the Coase Theorem to show that “The Problem of Social Cost” contains far more interesting and unsettling lessons—both for law as well as for economics. Indeed, while Coase’s arguments clearly target the Pigouvian attempts to “improve on the market” through government correctives, there is, lurking in those arguments, a much more profound critique …

United Nations Peacekeeping And Civilian Protection In Civil War, Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, Megan Shannon

Megan Shannon

No abstract provided.

Do Political Parties Matter For Turnout? Number Of Parties, Electoral Rules And Local Elections In Brazil And Bolivia, Carew E. Boulding, David Brown

Carew E Boulding

Does the number of political parties influence voter turnout in developing democracies? Some scholars argue that large party systems facilitate matching voter preferences with a specific party, increasing turnout. Others argue multiparty systems produce too many alternatives, decreasing turnout. In developing democracies, there is debate over whether these institutions matter at all. We argue that party systems do matter for turnout in developing countries, but the relationship between turnout and the number of political parties is conditional on the electoral formula. Under proportional representation systems, large numbers of parties increase turnout. Under winner take all systems, large numbers of parties …

Debating Law's Irrelevance: Legal Scholarship And The Coase Theorem In The 1960s, Steven G. Medema

Steven G Medema

The paper examines the treatment of the Coase theorem by legal scholars during the 1960s. The analysis demonstrates that it was legal scholars, rather than economists, who took the lead in applying Coase's negotiation result in the legal realm and that the early diffusion of Coase's result in the legal literature is anything but a "Chicago" story. We also observe that legal scholars were interesting in examining the applicability of Coase's result across a wide range of legal issues and, in contrast to economists, who were preoccupied with the efficiency predication of Coase's result, tended to focus on Coase's invariance …

Narrating Resilience: Transforming Urban Systems Through Collaborative Storytelling, Bruce Evan Goldstein, Anne Taufen Wessells, Raul Lejano, William Butler

Bruce Evan Goldstein

How can communities enhance social-ecological resilience within complex urban systems? Drawing on a new urbanist proposal in Orange County, California, it is suggested that planning that ignores diverse ways of knowing undermines the experience and shared meaning of those living in a city. The paper then describes how narratives lay at the core of efforts to reintegrate the Los Angeles River into the life of the city and the US Fire Learning Network’s efforts to address the nation’s wildfire crisis. In both cases, participants develop partially shared stories about alternative futures that foster critical learning and facilitate coordination without imposing …

Spatial Equilibrium In The Labor Market, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

The paper discusses two approaches to spatial equilibrium in the labor market. The more traditional approach of labor economics assumes wage differentials represent arbitrageable differences in utility, with implications 1) that migration should be toward higher wage areas and 2) that migration flows will lead to convergence in wages over space. The more recent approach of urban/regional economics follows Roback in examining the implications of assumed equilibrium in utility over space. In this view wage differentials are compensatory (along with rent differentials) for amenity variation over space. The implications for wage convergence over space are complicated, but in general there …

The Hedonic Method Of Valuing Environmental Policies And Quality, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

Benefit-cost analysts attempt to compare two states of the world, the status quo and a state in which a policy having benefits and costs is being contemplated. For environmental policies, this comparison is greatly complicated by the difficulty in inferring the values that individuals place on an increment to environmental quality. Unlike ordinary private goods, environmental goods are not directly exchanged in markets with observable prices. In this chapter, the hedonic approach to inferring the benefits of an environmental policy is examined.

Spatial Equilibrium In Labor Markets, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

Over long periods of human history, labor market equilibrium involved movements from low-wage areas to high-wage areas, a form of arbitrage under the implicit view that wage differentials corresponded to utility differentials. This “labor economics” view is likely to be viable as long as movement and information costs are high, and under this view the movements would be expected to cause wage convergence over space. In recent decades, perhaps beginning as early as the 1960’s, both the out of pocket and psychological costs of movement have plummeted with advances in transportation and communication technology and innovation. In addition, these same …

A Legal Standard For Post-Colonial Land Reform, Amelia Peterson

Amelia Peterson

This article proposes a legal standard for the design of post-colonial land redistribution policies. It confronts the complex interface between the need for land reform to alleviate land pressure in many developing countries, and the importance of upholding the idea of property. Regardless of which side of the post-colonial milieu we most quickly sympathize with, human rights law removes the tendency to seek out the victim by framing its language in terms of the homo sapien, not one particular race, gender, or economic status. It is in the interest of the various stakeholders enmeshed in post-colonial land imbalance debates and …

Domestic Violence Law And Feminism’S Identity Crisis: Toward A “Neo-Feminist” Legal Theory, Aya Gruber

Aya Gruber

By many accounts, feminism is in crisis. Traditional second-wave feminists are an ever-dwindling group, attacked by conservatives for being too liberal and by progressives for being too conservative. Newer voices weighing in on classic feminist issues like work rights, family structure, and rape are seen as abandoning the feminist mission in favor of other considerations like class and race. Accordingly, the conventional wisdom seems to be that there are two opposing progressive groups that address women’s issues—feminists and those who have receded from feminism. To many, this apparent fracture is exemplified by theorizing about domestic violence, where mainstream feminists supportive …

"Destinations:" A Comparison Of Sex Trafficking In India And The United States, Sarah Montana Hart

Sarah Montana Hart

This paper finds similarities in the sex trafficking industries in the United States and India, and offers some suggestions for the international community moving forward.

The Stock Act - Dispelling A Legal Perception, Casey K. Lekahal

Casey K Lekahal

“Few practices, short of manipulation, have as deleterious an effect on the investing public’s confidence in corporate institutions and the securities markets as the selective disclosure of and misuse of so-called inside information, i.e., material nonpublic information.”

Insider trading harms investor confidence in the markets which makes it more difficult for firms to raise capital and decreases liquidly. Further, insider trading harms the issuing corporation as it creates an incentive for management to direct the company to maximize their personal monetary gain rather than the corporation’s. Finally, insider trading hurts a non-issuer employer, such as a law firm or financial …

The Peculiar Immobility: Regional Affinity And The Postbellum Black Migrant, Philip E. Graves, Robert L. Sexton, Richard Vedder

PHILIP E GRAVES

Why did newly freed slaves and their descendants wait a half a century before migrating in large numbers to the superior economic opportunities in the North? Census lifetime migration data on both movers and stayers are examined intertemporally for both whites and blacks. Regression analysis reveals that before 1920 Southern blacks had a very strong affinity for the "Southern way of life."

Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Enviromental Projects: A Plethora Of Biases Understating Net Benefits, Philip E. Graves

PHILIP E GRAVES

There are many reasons to suspect that benefit-cost analysis applied to environmental policies will result in policy decisions that will reject those environmental policies. The important question, of course, is whether those rejections are based on proper science. The present paper explores sources of bias in the methods used to evaluate environmental policy in the United States, although most of the arguments translate immediately to decision-making in other countries. There are some “big picture” considerations that have gone unrecognized, and there are numerous more minor, yet cumulatively important, technical details that point to potentially large biases against acceptance on benefit-cost …

Inextricably Political: Race, Membership And Tribal Sovereignty, Sarah Krakoff

Sarah Krakoff

Courts address equal protection questions about the distinct legal treatment of American Indian tribes in the following dichotomous way: are classifications concerning American Indians “racial or political?” If the classification is political (i.e. based on federally recognized tribal status or membership in a federally recognized tribe) then courts will not subject it to heightened scrutiny. If the classification is racial rather than political, then courts may apply heightened scrutiny. This article challenges the dichotomy itself. The legal categories “tribe” and “tribal member” are themselves political, and reflect the ways in which tribes and tribal members have been racialized by U.S. …