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Full-Text Articles in Law

Government Clubs: Theory And Evidence From Voluntary Environmental Programs, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash Dec 2008

Government Clubs: Theory And Evidence From Voluntary Environmental Programs, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established numerous voluntary environmental programs over the last fifteen years, seeking to encourage businesses to make environmental progress beyond what current law requires them to achieve. EPA aims to induce beyond-compliance behavior by offering various forms of recognition and rewards, including relief from otherwise applicable environmental regulations. Despite EPA's emphasis on voluntary programs,relatively few businesses have availed themselves of these programs -- and paradoxically, the programs that offer the most significant regulatory benefits tend to have the fewest members. We explain this paradox by focusing on (a) how programs'membership screening corresponds with membership …


Evaluating The Social Effects Of Environmental Leadership Programs, Jonathan C. Borck, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash Oct 2008

Evaluating The Social Effects Of Environmental Leadership Programs, Jonathan C. Borck, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash

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In the past decade, EPA and over 20 states have created voluntary environmental leadership programs designed to recognize and reward businesses that take steps that go beyond compliance with the strictures of environmental law. Environmental leadership programs seek not only to spur direct improvements to environment quality but also to advance broader social goals that may lead indirectly to environmental improvements, such as improving business-government relationships and changing business culture. Measuring progress toward leadership programs’ social goals is a particularly challenging but essential task if researchers and decision makers are to understand the full impacts of these programs. In this …


Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo Jun 2008

Rethinking Broadband Internet Access, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo

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The emergence of broadband Internet technologies, such as cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, has reopened debates over how the Internet should be regulated. Advocates of network neutrality and open access to cable modem systems have proposed extending the regulatory regime developed to govern conventional telephone and narrowband Internet service to broadband. A critical analysis of the rationales traditionally invoked to justify the regulation of telecommunications networks--such as natural monopoly, network economic effects, vertical exclusion, and the dangers of ruinous competition--reveals that those rationales depend on empirical and theoretical preconditions that do not apply to broadband. In addition, …


The Managerial Turn In Environmental Policy, Cary Coglianese Jan 2008

The Managerial Turn In Environmental Policy, Cary Coglianese

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No abstract provided.


Policymaking Under Pressure: The Perils Of Incremental Responses To Climate Change, Cary Coglianese, Jocelyn D’Ambrosio Jan 2008

Policymaking Under Pressure: The Perils Of Incremental Responses To Climate Change, Cary Coglianese, Jocelyn D’Ambrosio

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Federal policymakers’ reluctance to enact a comprehensive climate change policy during the past decade has coincided with increased awareness of the inevitability and severity of the problems from global climate change. Thus, it is no surprise that piecemeal, sub-federal policies have garnered considerable support. Bolstered by the political science literature on the promise of incrementalism and democratic experimentalism, many proponents of climate change action favor incremental steps in the hope that they will improve the environment or at least serve as a basis for more comprehensive policies. Against this hopeful view, we explain why ad hoc responses to climate change …


Temporary Accidents?, Elizabeth Magill Jan 2008

Temporary Accidents?, Elizabeth Magill

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Review of Steven P. Croley, Regulation and Public Interests: The Possibility of Good Regulatory Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).


Environmental Leadership Programs: Toward An Empirical Assessment Of Their Performance*, Jonathan C. Borck, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash Jan 2008

Environmental Leadership Programs: Toward An Empirical Assessment Of Their Performance*, Jonathan C. Borck, Cary Coglianese, Jennifer Nash

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Over the past decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and states have developed environmental leadership programs (ELPs), a type of voluntary environmental program designed to recognize facilities with strong environmental performance records and encourage facilities to perform better. Proponents argue that ELPs overcome some of the limitations of traditional environmental regulation by encouraging managers to address the full gamut of environmental problems posed by their facilities, reducing the costs of environmental regulation, easing adversarialism, and fostering positive culture change. Although ELPs have been in place for at least five years at the federal level and in seventeen states, these …


Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler Jan 2008

Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler

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What does distributive justice require of risk regulators? Various executive orders enjoin health and safety regulators to take account of “distributive impacts,” “equity,” or “environmental justice,” and many scholars endorse these requirements. But concrete methodologies for evaluating the equity effects of risk regulation policies remain undeveloped. The contrast with cost-benefit analysis--now a very well developed set of techniques --is stark. Equity analysis by governmental agencies that regulate health and safety risks, at least in the United States, lacks rigor and structure. This Article proposes a rigorous framework for risk-equity analysis, which I term “probabilistic population profile analysis” (PPPA). PPPA is …


The Rhetoric And Reality Of Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese Jan 2008

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Regulatory Reform, Cary Coglianese

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In January 2007, President George W. Bush stirred up widespread controversy by issuing amendments to an executive order on regulatory review adopted initially by President Clinton. The Bush amendments variously require agencies to issue written regulatory problem statements, assign gate-keeping responsibilities to Regulatory Policy Officers within each agency, and undertake analytic reviews before adopting certain kinds of guidance documents. Both legal scholars and policy advocates charge that the Bush amendments place significant new burdens on administrative agencies and will delay the issuance of important new regulatory policies. This paper challenges the rhetorical claims of obstructionism that have emerged in response …


The Law And Economics Of Environmental Federalism: Europe And The United States Compared, Michael G. Faure, Jason S. Johnston Jan 2008

The Law And Economics Of Environmental Federalism: Europe And The United States Compared, Michael G. Faure, Jason S. Johnston

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This article describes the evolution and key features of the centralized environmental regulatory systems that emerged in the United States and Europe during the latter half of the twentieth century. It applies insights from the positive economic analysis of regulatory centralization in an attempt to explain a striking paradox found in both the European and American centralized environmental regulatory regimes: the fact that in both systems, centralized environmental regulation has been adopted not as a solution for transboundary pollution (interjursidictional externalities), but rather for pollution that is primarily local. The paper develops a positive account that explains the tendency of …


Much Ado About Nothing?, Cary Coglianese Jan 2008

Much Ado About Nothing?, Cary Coglianese

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Policy scholars and decision makers should be careful before concluding that President Bush's recent Executive Order 13422 will result in "paralysis by analysis." That lament has been heard about other changes to rule making procedures over the last seven decades, yet steady increases in the cost and volume of federal regulations during that time period clearly indicate that paralysis has yet to set in. Administrative procedures are embedded within a complex web of politics, institutions, and organizational behavior. Within that web, procedures are but one factor influencing government agencies.