Digital Commons Network^™

Inflation, Market Failures, And Algorithms, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

Inflation is a problem of tremendous scale. But inflation itself is unlikely to cause the greatest economic harm during inflationary periods. Instead, a more likely source of devastation will be policymakers’ response to inflation. Their main anti-inflation tools, most notably increasing interest rates, increase unemployment and the risk of recessions. This Article argues that there is a better approach. Rather than defaulting to interest rate hikes that harm markets, policy makers should prioritize laws that lower prices while improving markets. For decades, businesses have raised prices by manipulating consumers, exercising monopoly power, and lobbying for laws that block competition. Automated …

Algorithms In Business, Merchant-Consumer Interactions, & Regulation, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Faculty Scholarship

The shift towards the use of algorithms in business has transformed merchant–consumer interactions. Products and services are increasingly tailored for consumers through algorithms that collect and analyze vast amounts of data from interconnected devices, digital platforms, and social networks. While traditionally merchants and marketeers have utilized market segmentation, customer demographic profiles, and statistical approaches, the exponential increase in consumer data and computing power enables them to develop and implement algorithmic techniques that change consumer markets and society as a whole. Algorithms enable targeting of consumers more effectively, in real-time, and with high predictive accuracy in pricing and profiling strategies. In …

A Comparative Study Of Faecal Sludge Management In Malawi And Zambia: Status, Challenges And Opportunities In Pit Latrine Emptying, Rochelle H. Holm, James Madalitso Tembo, Bernard Thole

Faculty Scholarship

This review paper covers the issues of pit latrine emptying national policies and regulations with a focus on Malawi and Zambia. With 2.4 billion people worldwide still lacking improved sanitation facilities, developing countries need to look at policy, regulation and practice for household sanitation service provision with a new lens. What happens “next,” when improved sanitation facilities eventually become full? An emphasis on faecal sludge management has multiplied this important issue in the past few years. The authors compare the pit latrine emptying situation in Malawi and Zambia with a focus on status, challenges and opportunities. To build this comparison, …

A Comparative Study Of Faecal Sludge Management In Malawi And Zambia: Status, Challenges And Opportunities In Pit Latrine Emptying, Rochelle Holm, James Madalitso Tembo, Bernard Thole

Faculty Scholarship

This review paper covers the issues of pit latrine emptying national policies and regulations with a focus on Malawi and Zambia. With 2.4 billion people worldwide still lacking improved sanitation facilities, developing countries need to look at policy, regulation and practice for household sanitation service provision with a new lens. What happens “next,” when improved sanitation facilities eventually become full? An emphasis on faecal sludge management has multiplied this important issue in the past few years. The authors compare the pit latrine emptying situation in Malawi and Zambia with a focus on status, challenges and opportunities. To build this comparison, …

Challenges For People With Disabilities Within The Health Care Safety Net, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Medicare and Medicaid were passed to serve as safety nets for the country's most vulnerable populations, yet, the disabled community continues to be one whose health care needs are not being met. This group is all too frequently left to suffer health disparities due to cultural incompetency, stigma and misunderstanding, and an inability to create policy changes that covers the population as a whole and their acute and long-term needs.

Beyond Tax Credits: Smarter Tax Policy For A Cleaner, More Democratic Energy Future, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies have the potential to mitigate climate change, secure America’s energy independence, and create millions of green jobs. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions, however, these long-term benefits will not be realized without near-term policy support for renewables. This Article assesses the efficiency of federal tax incentives for renewables and proposes policy reform to more cost-effectively promote renewable energy through capital markets and crowdfunding.

Federal support for renewable energy projects today comes primarily in the form of tax incentives such as accelerated depreciation and, critically, tax credits. Empirical evidence reveals that …

Was The First Justice Harlan Anti-Chinese?, James W. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

The first Justice John Marshall Harlan has long been recognized as a defender of Black civil rights. Yet some scholars challenge Harlan’s egalitarian reputation by arguing that he was anti-Chinese. In this Article, the Author discusses the evidence which has been offered to support the claim that Harlan was anti-Chinese and offers additional evidence never before presented to argue against this hypothesis. Harlan’s critics have assembled some evidence in a way that suggests Harlan had an anti-Chinese bias. The Author suggests that the evidence is ambiguous and that it can be assembled to produce a different picture from the one …

Perceptions Of Efficacy, Morality, And Politics Of Potential Cadaveric Organ-Transplantation Reforms, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

We sought to explore the political feasibility of potential policy reforms to address the shortage of cadaveric organs for transplantation in America. We recruited 730 human subjects from an online population and assigned them to writing tasks that experimentally manipulated the salience of moral and posthumous risks. Subjects read 95-word descriptions of six proposed policy reforms, rating efficacy, morality, and overall support for each. We created weighted estimates of the overall potential support for each reform (WEOS), correcting for the skew in our study population to very roughly approximate the political affiliations of the American public.

The data suggest that …

Health Insurance Is Dead; Long Live Health Insurance, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Today, health insurance is no longer simply a class of insurance that covers risks to health, and it has not been so for many years. Health insurance has become a unique form of insurance — a mechanism to pay for healthcare that uses risk spreading as one of several pricing methods. The Affordable Care Act builds on this important payment function to create a complex social insurance system to finance healthcare for (almost) everyone. This article examines how the ACA draws on various conceptions of insurance to produce a quasi-social insurance system. This system poses new challenges to laws governing …

Environmental And Occupational Interventions For Primary Prevention Of Cancer: A Cross-Sectorial Policy Framework, Carolina Espina, Miquel Porta, Joachim Schüz, Ildefonso Hernández Aguado, Robert V. Percival, Carlos Dora, Terry Slevin, Julietta Rodriguez Guzman, Tim Meredith, Philip J. Landrigan, Maria Neira

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly 13 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths occur worldwide each year; 63% of cancer deaths occur in low and middle-income countries. A substantial portion of all cancers are attributable to carcinogenic exposures in the environment and the workplace.

The objective of this study was to develop an evidence-based global vision and strategy for the primary prevention of environmental and occupational cancer.

The study concluded that opportunities exist to revitalize comprehensive global cancer control policies by incorporating primary interventions against environmental and occupational carcinogens.

Proxy Citizenship And Transnational Advocacy: Colombian Activists From Putumayo To Washington, Dc, Winifred Tate

Faculty Scholarship

Proxy citizenship is the mechanism through which certain rights of citizenship—the ability to make claims for redress to a state—are conferred on activists through relationships with NGOs. Focusing on advocacy from within the policy process, U.S. and Colombian NGOs channeled political legitimacy and rights of access to Colombians, whose claims emerge from the experience of governance as articulated through testimony. This process, and its roots within the shared history of the Putumayo region of Colombia and Washington, DC, reveals emerging practices of citizenship claims and transnational political participation.

Smarter Finance For Cleaner Energy: Open Up Master Limited Partnerships (Mlps) And Real Estate Investment Trusts (Reits) To Renewable Energy Investment, Felix Mormann, Dan Reicher

Faculty Scholarship

This policy proposal makes the case for opening Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) — both well-established investment structures — to renewable energy investment. MLPs and, more recently, REITs have a proven track record for promoting oil, gas, and other traditional energy sources. When extended to renewable energy projects these tools will help promote growth, move renewables closer to subsidy independence, and vastly broaden the base of investors in America’s energy economy.

Enhancing The Investor Appeal Of Renewable Energy, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces an investor-oriented framework for the evaluation of renewable energy policy, applies these newly developed criteria to a qualitative comparison of the primary policy instruments, and offers recommendations to enhance the investor appeal of renewable energy in the United States.

The multi-trillion dollar task of scaling renewable energy technologies to mitigate climate change, ensure energy security, and create green jobs is one of the most daunting challenges of the twenty-first century. It is, in fact, too great a challenge for either the public or private sector to shoulder alone. Rather, public policy must catalyze private investment in renewable …

Mobilizing Public Markets To Finance Renewable Energy Projects: Insights From Expert Stakeholders, Paul Schwabe, Michael Mendelsohn, Felix Mormann, Douglas J. Arent

Faculty Scholarship

Financing renewable energy projects in the United States can be a complex, time consuming, and expensive process. Currently, most equity investment in new renewable power production facilities is supported by tax credits and accelerated depreciation benefits, and is constrained by the pool of potential investors that can fully use these tax benefits and are willing to engage in complex financial structures. For debt financing, non-government lending to renewables has largely been provided by foreign banks that may be under future lending constraints due to economic and regulatory conditions.

To discuss these and other renewable energy financing challenges and to identify …

Application Of Default Rules To Address Financial Conflicts Of Interest In Academic Medical Centers, Joanna K. Sax

Faculty Scholarship

A recent report issued from the Institute of Medicine contains an extensive analysis of financial conflicts of interest (FCOIs) in biomedical science. In brief, an FCOI exists when a profit-seeking motive either unduly influences or appears to influence an academic scientist’s primary obligations. The cornerstone of current policy to address FCOIs at academic medical centers (AMCs) is disclosure; however, disclosure does not appear to appropriately regulate, manage, or eliminate FCOIs.

Although the relationships between intramural scientists and industry and extramural scientists and industry may be structurally different, they both can lead to FCOIs that threaten scientific integrity. Overall, the NIH …

Requirements For A Renewables Revolution, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article identifies and analyzes the obstacles presently barring the rise of renewables, evaluates the role of the current policy favorite emission pricing, and offers design recommendations for a comprehensive U.S. renewables policy.

Successful climate change mitigation requires a timely shift to renewable sources of energy, such as sunlight, wind or tides, to decarbonize today’s high-carbon electricity sector. But market pull alone is not strong enough. This Article discusses the most widely cited economic barriers and identifies and evaluates additional obstacles related to the electricity sector’s regulatory framework.

Emission pricing is largely considered the most efficient policy to drive the …

Evaluation Of Academic Scientists’ Responses To Situations That Pose A Conflict Of Interest, Joanna K. Sax

Faculty Scholarship

The industry-academy relationship has many benefits, but it also has potential drawbacks, including potential conflicts of interest (e.g., when the profit motives of a private company unduly influence academic responsibilities). To date, policies intended to regulate or manage financial conflicts of interest appear to be unsatisfying and inadequate. The present study examined predictors of the responses of academic scientists and clinicians to hypothetical situations in which financial and other conflicts of interest may arise. Academic scientists and clinicians at five medical schools completed an anonymous survey that included vignettes that posed a potential conflict of interest. Participants indicated the likelihood …

Relational Duties, Regulatory Duties, And The Widening Gap Between Individual Health Law And Collective Health Policy, William M. Sage

Faculty Scholarship

In response to a prominent editorial by Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, Professor Sage explains how a relational approach has impeded health law's ability to effectively govern the American health care system, arguing that health law has traditionally focused on the physician-patient encounter rather than on achieving collective objectives (which he calls regulatory duties). Professor Sage traces health law's relational emphasis to private and public law, professional ethics and bioethics, budgetary and general politics, and health care consumerism. He concludes that four areas of health policy-conflicts of interest in biomedical research, managed care and pay-for-performance, health care transparency and education, and …

Tools, Not Rules: The Heuristic Nature Of Statutory Interpretation, Morell E. Mullins Sr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Alternative Dispute Resolution And The Occupational Safety And Health Review Commission: Settlement Judges And Simplified Proceedings, Morell E. Mullins Sr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Testing Poor Pregnant Women For Cocaine: Physicians As Police Investigators, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In 1989, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall surmised that “declaring a war on illegal drugs is good public policy . . . [but] the first, and worst, casualty of war will be the precious liberties of our citizens.” The same year, in the midst of President George Bush's “war on drugs,” the Medical University of South Carolina initiated a program to screen selected pregnant patients for cocaine and to provide positive test results to the police. At a time of high public concern about “cocaine babies,” this program seemed reasonable to the university and local public officials. Drug-screening programs in …

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

An Eclectic History And Analysis Of The 1990 Uniform Probate Code, Lawrence H. Averill

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Economic Theory Of Politics And Legal Interpretation In The United States, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.