Law Commons^™

Enforcing Wildlife Protection In China, Peter J. Li

Peter J. Li, PhD

Since China enacted the Wildlife Protection Law in 1988, its wildlife has been threatened with the most serious survival crisis. In the prereform era, wildlife was a neglected policy area. Serving the objective of reform, the Wildlife Protection Law upholds the “protection, domestication, and utilization” norm inherited from past policies. It establishes rules for wildlife management and protection. This law provides for penalties against violations. Yet, its ambiguous objectives, limited protection scope, and decentralized responsibilities have made its enforcement difficult. Political factors such as institutional constraints, national obsession with economic growth, shortage of funding, and local protectionism have made the …

Womenomics For Nursing Growth: Making The Case For Work Time Flexibility And Mother-Friendlier Workplaces, Gabriela Steier

Gabriela Steier

Gender bias at work often coerces breastfeeding working mothers to choose between their baby or their job. The forced choice between private and work life irreconcilably separates motherhood from a woman’s career, giving rise to the Mommy Wage Gap and the Maternal Wall. Consequently, the separation of work and family life has negative impacts on both the mother and her child. These negative impacts also bear on public health and the economy on a large scale. The more unaccommodating workplaces are, the stricter the separation between work and family life and the more permanent the choice a working mother has …

Tax Reform Discourse, Anthony C. Infanti

Anthony C. Infanti

Our tax system is supposed to serve the public good by fairly raising the revenue that we need to fund public expenditures — for example, the common defense, social safety net programs such as Social Security and Medicare, etc. But the tax reform debate has shifted away from discussing how best to distribute the burden of these common expenditures and instead has come to focus on how tax reform can be used to spur economic growth. Especially in times of economic crisis, these two goals — equitably funding public expenditures and spurring economic growth — sound equally important and somehow …

A Primer For Economic Development Directors And Other Social Entrepreneurs: Using 'Cash' As A Management Practice, Oscar T. Mcknight, Ronald Paugh, Aaron Mcknight, Melinda Belden

Oscar T McKnight Ph.D.

City and community oficials are responsible for developing and sustaining economic growth. This research focuses on Best Practices Cities - those with current and predicted economic growth above the national average - and the specific management practices that are responsible for such growth. The CASH model is presented to assist city planners and other social entrepreneurs in their economic development initiatives.

[Review Of The Book Advancing Theory In Labour Law And Industrial Relations In A Global Context], Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] The ideas and insights in Advancing Theory are an important contribution to the on-the-ground social justice movement challenging corporate rule in the global economy. It can even help rescue labor law and industrial relations as intellectual disciplines and career trajectories for a new generation of students and practitioners excited about thinking globally and acting locally.

International Labor Rights And The Sovereignty Question: Nafta And Guatemala, Two Case Studies, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Labor rights advocates in the United States and allied organizations abroad attempting to establish international fair labor standards run up against traditional notions of sovereignty in formulating national labor policies and development strategies. In the same way that entrenched sovereignty principles gradually yielded to international human rights claims after World War E, sovereignty is now being challenged by claims of international laborrights in the field of employment standards and industrial relations. This Article seeks to illuminate this challenge to sovereignty in two case studies of labor rights advocacy. Part I sets the stage with an overview of the growing …

Good Deficits: Protecting The Public Interest From Deficit Hysteria, Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan

President Obama has come under increasingly fierce criticism for the size of the federal budget deficit, as both Democratic and Republican politicians loudly proclaim that federal spending should be cut. This article explains why such anti-deficit fervor is misguided and simplistic, and why, perhaps counter-intuitively, cutting government spending can hurt the country, rather than help it, in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, cutting deficit spending can be disastrous to the economy, especially if the economy is already in decline. In addition, because the federal budget fails to separate spending that provides long-term benefits …

Reducing The Impact Of Ethnic Tensions On Economic Growth – Economic Or Political Institutions?, Atin Basu Choudhary, Jim Bang, Michael Reksulak

Atin Basu Choudhary

We use a standard growth regression model and show that ethnic tensions reduce per capita growth rates. We also find evidence that “good” economic and political institutions improve per capita growth rates. More importantly, good economic institutions mitigate the effect of ethnic tensions on per capita growth while good political institutions do not. Consequently, it is foremost capitalist freedom that promotes peace and development.

Toward A New Law And Economics: The Case Of The Stock Market, Lawrence E. Mitchell

Lawrence E. Mitchell

Toward a New Law and Economics: The Case of the Stock Market

Abstract

Do the public equity markets play the macroeconomic role we believe them to play? What is the relationship between the U.S. public equity markets and American economic growth? What do these conclusions teach us about the approaches we take and should take in evaluating and designing the laws of corporate governance and securities regulation?

The law and economics paradigm of the last forty years may be mistaken in assuming that economic efficiency on an individual (or institutional) level is sufficient to ensure economic welfare on a macroeconomic …

How Do Local-Level Legal Institutions Promote Development?, Varun Gauri

Varun Gauri

This paper develops a framework and some hypotheses regarding the impact of local-level, informal legal institutions on three economic outcomes: aggregate growth, inequality, and human capabilities. It presents a set of stylized differences between formal and informal legal justice systems, identifies the pathways through which formal systems promote economic outcomes, reflects on what the stylized differences mean for the potential impact of informal legal institutions on economic outcomes, and looks at extant case studies to examine the plausibility of the arguments presented. The paper concludes that local-level, informal legal institutions can support social substitutes for the enforcement of contracts, although …

Land Reform As Social Justice: The Case Of South Africa, Karol C. Boudreaux

Karol C. Boudreaux

In his book Law, Legislation and Liberty, F.A. Hayek takes the concept of social justice to task, but argues that when governments (or other organizations) violate people’s rights by imposing discriminatory laws intervention may be necessary to correct the situation. How might such guidance shape real-world policy? As a result of a very long history of discriminatory legislation, black South Africans suffered substantial harms at the hands of past governments. Following the political transition in 1994, the new government implemented land reforms policies designed, in part, to satisfy calls for social justice. This article examines these policies and suggests that …

How Do Local-Level Legal Institutions Promote Development?, Varun Gauri

Varun Gauri

This paper develops a framework and some hypotheses regarding the impact of local-level, informal legal institutions on three economic outcomes: aggregate growth, inequality, and human capabilities. It presents a set of stylized differences between formal and informal legal justice systems, identifies the pathways through which formal systems promote economic outcomes, reflects on what the stylized differences mean for the potential impact of informal legal institutions on economic outcomes, and looks at extant case studies to examine the plausibility of the arguments presented. The paper concludes that local-level, informal legal institutions can support social substitutes for the enforcement of contracts, though …

Partidos, Gobierno Y Congreso: Chile Y Perú, 1965-2005, Jose Luis Sardon

Jose Luis Sardon

En el presente artículo se argumenta que las diferencias en los niveles de desarrollo alcanzados por Chile y Perú en los últimos 40 años se explican no solo por las reformas económicas emprendidas en uno y otro país sino también por la reforma política realizada en Chile en 1988, mediante la cual se sustituyó el sistema de representación proporcional por un sistema binominal para la elección del Congreso. Esto habría brindado incentivos para la consolidación del sistema de partidos y la estabilización del proceso democrático en Chile. Por el contrario, Perú, al haber persistido y aún profundizado la proporcionalidad de …