Economic Policy Commons^™

Antitrust And The Design Of Production, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

Both economics and antitrust policy have traditionally distinguished “production” from “distribution.” The former is concerned with how products are designed and built, the latter with how they are placed into the hands of consumers. Nothing in the language of the antitrust laws suggests much concern with production as such. Although courts do not view it that way, even per se unlawful naked price fixing among rivals is a restraint on distribution rather than production. Naked price fixing assumes a product that has already been designed and built, and the important cartel decision is what should be each firm’s output ...

Intellectual Property And Competition, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

A legal system that relies on private property rights to promote economic development must consider that profits can come from two different sources. First, both competition under constant technology and innovation promote economic growth by granting many of the returns to the successful developer. Competition and innovation both increase output, whether measured by quantity or quality. Second, however, profits can come from practices that reduce output, in some cases by reducing quantity, or in others by reducing innovation.

IP rights and competition policy were traditionally regarded as in conflict. IP rights create monopoly, which was thought to be inimical to ...

Boston Children Thrive In 5: Connecting Families, Building Community (Presentation Slides), Donna Haig Friedman, Mary Coonan, Anne Douglass, Alice Carter

Anne Douglass

Presentation about the Boston Thrive in 5 program.

Benefits Of Reduced Meat Consumption In The U.S.: Cost-Benefit Analysis Of An Increase In Plant-Based Diets, Rebecca Zahora

Senior Honors Projects

How sustainable is our food system? An investigation of diet choices and their environmental impacts

Food is often thought of as a commodity, when fundamentally it is our nourishment and foundation of life. In the United States, it appears as if we have a functional food system, but in reality what we have is an unsustainable system of industrialized agriculture perpetuated by a disproportionate allocation of resources. Current consumer behavior within our food system is detrimental to future environmental and human well being, ultimately exacerbating the timing and magnitude of global climate change.

With negative impacts of climate change looming ...

A House Of Cards: Free Banking In Antebellum Chicago, Miles J. Holtzman

Business and Economics Summer Fellows

The Chicago free banking market of the antebellum period has more than once aroused the interest of historians and economists alike. Implemented in the state of Illinois in 1851, free banking was a common, though not universal occurrence in the United States at the time. The city of Chicago’s experience with free banking was anything but common, however. Within the first 18 months after the Illinois legislature enacted the Illinois Free Banking Law, 9 free banks had begun operation in Chicago and between them had an aggregate note issue of over $800,000. But by 1860, Chicago was home ...

Antitrust Policy And Inequality Of Wealth, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

Why would anyone want to use antitrust law as a wealth distribution device when far more explicit statutory tools are available for that purpose? One feature of antitrust is its open-textured, nonspecific statutes that are interpreted by judges. As a result, using antitrust to redistribute wealth may be a way of invoking the judicial process without having to go to Congress or a state legislature that is likely to be unsympathetic. Of course, a corollary is that someone attempting to use antitrust law to redistribute wealth will have to rely on the existing antitrust statutes rather than obtaining a new ...

Appraising Merger Efficiencies, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

Mergers of business firms violate the antitrust laws when they threaten to lessen competition, which generally refers to a price increase resulting from a reduction in output. However, a merger that threatens competition may also enable the post-merger firm to reduce its costs or improve its product. Attitudes toward mergers are heavily driven by assumptions about efficiency gains. If mergers of competitors never produced efficiency gains but simply reduced the number of competitors, a strong presumption against them would be warranted. We tolerate most mergers because of a background, highly generalized belief that most or at least many produce cost ...

Progressive Antitrust, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

Faculty Scholarship

Several American political candidates and administrations have both run and served under the “progressive” banner for more than a century, right through the 2016 election season. For the most part these have pursued interventionist antitrust policies, reflecting a belief that markets are fragile and in need of repair, that certain interest groups require greater protection, or in some cases that antitrust policy is an extended arm of regulation. This paper argues that most of this progressive antitrust policy was misconceived, including that reflected in the 2016 antitrust plank of the Democratic Party. The progressive state is best served by a ...

Workforce Investment Act In Western Kentucky: An Evaluation Of Program Service Outcomes, Matt S. Luckett

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Workforce development programs designed to provide individuals with the skills necessary to gain employment have been in existance for over 80 years. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) was a federal workforce development program that ran from 2000 to 2014. The WIA provided three main programs: youth, adult, and dislocated worker. The focus of this research was to evaluate the individual services in the adult and dislocated worker programs in the Western Kentucky Workforce Investment Area and identify the most effective service in each program.

The adult and dislocated worker programs each offered three tiered services: core, intensive, and training. Individuals ...

An Ethical Evaluation Of The Modern Pharmaceutical Industry, Kaitlyn Drennan

Dialogue & Nexus

Lack of transparency, wrongdoings, and unlawful promotion characterize the healthcare industry; these are especially prevalent within the pharmaceutical industry. Consequently, an investigation into the evidence of the corruption and the ethical infringement is needed. In this paper, I will evaluate the pharmaceutical industry’s adherence to the three major branches of ethics. The ever-increasing prices of pharmaceutical products, especially medications used for the combating of anaphylaxis and cancer, coupled with the compensatory-based medication promotion and research points to a major crisis in the realm of social justice. These examples, among many other current issues, lead to difficulties in individuals receiving ...

Feedback Loop Failure: Implications For The Self-Regulation Of The Sharing Economy, Abbey Stemler

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Bringing Together Policymakers, Researchers, And Practitioners To Discuss Job Loss, Kristin F. Butcher, Kevin F. Hallock

Kevin F Hallock

[Excerpt] On November 18–19, 2004, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Joyce Foundation cosponsored a conference at the Chicago Fed, “Job Loss: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses,” to bring together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss job loss from the perspective of both firms and workers. The first day focused on new research findings, with discussion and comment from participants with backgrounds in policy, practice, and research. The second day featured an address by Michael Moskow, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and panel discussions on layoff procedures from the point of view of firms ...

Estimating Willingness To Pay For E85 In The United States, Kenneth Liao, Sébastien Pouliot, Bruce A. Babcock

Sebastien Pouliot

Meeting US ethanol blending mandates proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency will require a substantial number of motorists with flex-fuel vehicles to switch from low ethanol-gasoline blends to high ethanol-gasoline blends. The lower the willingness to pay for high-ethanol blends, the greater the cost of complying with the proposed mandates. Existing estimates of the willingness to pay for high-ethanol blends use data from Brazil (where consumers have knowledge of and experience with high-ethanol blends), data generated when retail prices greatly favored low-ethanol blends, or stated data collected from mail and online surveys. To obtain more accurate estimates of US willingness ...

Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank, Wooyoung Lee, Arkar Hein

Politica Northwestern

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a new international financial institution created by China, recently gained media attention following the induction of several new high-profile members. The bank was initially proposed by China and then launched last October with 20 other countries. Since then, many more nations – including some prominent US allies – have signed on. In total, there are now 57 Prospective Founding Members.

Communities Of Concentrated Poverty: A Proposal For Oregon, Sara A. Chopp

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This paper is a proposal for how to address poverty in Oregon based on information gathered from interviewing experts in the field and reviewing literature produced by scholars and organizations that address issues related to poverty. The following outlines how we can best address communities of concentrated poverty in Oregon by (1) Addressing communities of concentrated poverty as well as individuals in poverty; (2) Designing efforts that focus on race, equity and social mobility; (3) Defining communities of concentrated poverty using a multidimensional definition based on the dimensions of poverty outlined in The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s ...

Economic Evaluation Of Coastal Land Loss In Louisiana, Stephen R. Barnes, Craig Bond, Nicholas Burger, Kate Anania, Aaron Strong, Sarah Weilant, Stephanie Virgets

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

Louisiana has lost approximately 1,880 square miles of land over the past eighty years. Projections suggest that in a future without action, the next fifty years could result in the loss of 1,750 additional square miles of land area. As land loss continues, a large portion of the natural and man-made capital stocks of coastal Louisiana will be at greater risk of damage, either from land loss or from the associated increase in storm damage. We estimate the replacement cost of capital stock directly at risk from land loss ranges from approximately $2.1 billion to $3.5 ...

Disrespecting The Minimum Wage: How States Limit The Opportunity For Restaurant Workers To Support Themselves, Samantha Pereira

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

This paper examines the inequality in the restaurant industry in America. It focuses specifically on the tipped minimum wages in different states compared to the real minimum wage and looks into the gender and racial inequality present in restaurants. The first section analyzes the history of tipping and what it has become in the United States. The paper then moves to describe different struggles that tipped workers in the restaurant industry have to face. The paper also discusses different arguments to raising the tipped minimum wage and compares states with a tipped minimum wage and states without a tipped minimum ...

The Issue At The Heart Of America’S Great Unbanking, Lisa Servon

Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative

Consumer protection regulation targets services like payday lenders under the presumption that these services can be predatory and associated with high costs. Yet an increasing number of Americans are utilizing such alternative financial services and joining the ranks of the “unbanked” and “underbanked.” Altering this status quo and promoting greater middle-class stability will require that policymakers foster innovation in the development of high-quality, transparent, and consumer-oriented financial services within the mainstream banking system.

Building Capacity In Asia, Julie Kozack

Asian Management Insights

Policymakers need to be equipped with tools to analyse economic developments and make sound policy decisions.

Policy Comment: Proposals For Ontario's Solar Future, Rashin Alizadeh

Western Journal of Legal Studies

In Ontario, the protection of solar energy is both complicated and limited. In order to take advantage of evolving greener energy sources, and reduce our contribution to global warming, Ontario must better protect solar energy use and solar energy investments. This commentary evaluates the incentives for extending the use of solar technology as part of the Green Energy Act, 2009, SO 2009. The analysis focuses on the relationship between the provincial and municipal governments as it relates to the green energy industry, and the level of public engagement and awareness that is being achieved. Reform to municipal zoning bylaws are ...