Law Commons^™

Intermediaries Revisited: Is Efficient Certification Consistent With Profit Maximization?, Jonathan M. Barnett

Jonathan M Barnett

Private certification mechanisms are a key component of the regulatory infrastructure in the financial sector and other commercial settings. It is generally assumed that certification intermediaries have profit-based incentives to deliver accurate information to the certified market. But this view does not account for repeated failures in certification markets. Those failures can be explained by an inherent defect in the incentive structure of certification intermediaries: entry barriers both support and undermine the consistent supply of accurate information to the certified market. Certification markets tend to converge on a handful of providers protected by switching costs, product opacity and reputational noise. …

The Precautionary Principle In The Colombian Constitutional Jurisprudence: Scientific Uncertainty And Selective Omissions [En Español], Daniel A. Monroy, Camilo E. Ossa

Daniel A Monroy C

En el presente artículo se propone hacer una lectura crítica al principio de precaución, buscando profundizar, de manera específica, algunas cuestiones que minan el equilibrio del principio como instrumento guía para la toma decisiones de quien corresponde tomarlas. Así, el artículo está estructurado en dos partes, (i) por un lado se aborda la cuestión teórica, desarrollando la concepción que, en la doctrina, se tiene frente al principio, teniendo en cuenta dos aspectos esenciales como son: las implicaciones que supone afronta la “incertidumbre científica”, elemento fundamental del principio; y, la defensa de la tesis según la cual en muchos casos la …

Curb Your Enthusiasm For Pigouvian Taxes, Victor Fleischer

Victor Fleischer

Pigouvian (or "corrective") taxes have been proposed or enacted on dozens of products and activities that may be harmful in excess: carbon, gasoline, fat, sugar, guns, cigarettes, alcohol, traffic, zoning, executive pay, and financial transactions, among others. Academics of all political stripes are mystified by the public’s inability to see the merits of using Pigouvian taxes more frequently to address serious social harms.

This enthusiasm for Pigouvian taxes should be tempered. A Pigouvian tax is easy to design—as a uniform excise tax—if one assumes that each individual causes the same amount of harm with each incremental increase in activity on …