Law and Economics Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Drug Ideologies Of The United States, Macy Montgomery

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

The United States has been increasingly creating lenient drug policies. Seventeen states and Washington, the District of Columbia, legalized marijuana, and Oregon decriminalized certain drugs, including methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine. The medical community has proven that drugs, including marijuana, have myriad adverse health side effects. This leads to two questions: Why does the United States government continue to create lenient drug policies, and what reasons do citizens give for legalizing drugs when the medical community has proven them harmful? The paper hypothesizes that the disadvantages of drug legalization outweigh its benefits because of the numerous harms it causes, such as …

Public Ownership And The Wto In A Post Covid-19 Era: From Trade Disputes To A 'Social' Function, Paolo Davide Farah, Davide Zoppolato

Articles

Public ownership is closely bound to the need of the government to protect and guarantee the well-being of its citizens. Where the market cannot, or does not want to, provide goods and services, the State uses different tools to intervene, influence, and control some aspects of the private sphere of expression of its citizens in the name and interest of the collectivity. Although, in the past century, this behavior was accepted as one of the expressions of the public authority and part of the social contract, this perception has shifted partially in accordance with the wave of privatization programs initiated …

A Geographically Targeted Approach For A Preceptor Tax Incentive Using Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas (Hpsas), Julia Mattingly, Sarah Belcher, Samuel C. Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

Years before the COVID-19 pandemic brought on a health care shortage in Kentucky, its rural areas were already struggling to obtain and attract primary care medical practitioners. Even though the number of medical school graduates in the U.S. has steadily increased throughout the years, there is a general disinterest in rural or small-town practice, and legislators throughout the country have pondered ways to address this issue plaguing communities. Versions of Preceptor Tax Incentive legislation in Kentucky have been proposed in the General Assembly to address care shortages in the state, however, all have been unsuccessful at truly targeting rural areas …

Liability For Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Medicine, W. Nicholson Price, Sara Gerke, I. Glenn Cohen

Law & Economics Working Papers

While artificial intelligence has substantial potential to improve medical practice, errors will certainly occur, sometimes resulting in injury. Who will be liable? Questions of liability for AI-related injury raise not only immediate concerns for potentially liable parties, but also broader systemic questions about how AI will be developed and adopted. The landscape of liability is complex, involving health-care providers and institutions and the developers of AI systems. In this chapter, we consider these three principal loci of liability: individual health-care providers, focused on physicians; institutions, focused on hospitals; and developers.

An Attempt To Bring Modern Workplace Realities To The Social Security Disability Adjudication System, Robert E. Rains

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Pandemic Emotions: The Good, The Bad, And The Unconscious —Implications For Public Health, Financial Economics, Law, And Leadership, Peter H. Huang

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Pandemics lead to emotions that can be good, bad, and unconscious. This Article offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how emotions during pandemics affect people’s responses to pandemics, public health, financial economics, law, and leadership. Pandemics are heart-breaking health crises. Crises produce emotions that impact decision-making. This Article analyzes how fear and anger over COVID-19 fueled anti-Asian and anti-Asian American hatred and racism. COVID-19 caused massive tragic economic, emotional, mental, physical, and psychological suffering. These difficulties are interconnected and lead to vicious cycles. Fear distorts people’s decision readiness, deliberation, information acquisition, risk perception, and thinking. Distortions affect people’s financial, health, and …

Tragedy Of The Energy Commons: How Government Regulation Can Help Mitigate The Environmental And Public Health Consequences Of Cryptocurrency Mining, Jeff Thomson

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

The use of cryptocurrencies in daily life has continued to rise over the last decade and shows no signs of slowing down. Although cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, provide numerous tangible benefits to society, the process of mining these cryptocurrencies is extremely energy intensive. Accordingly, a tragedy of the energy commons has resulted whereby the monetary incentive to mine cryptocurrencies has distorted our collective ability to care for our shared energy resources. The current system allows for industrious individuals to set up cryptocurrency mines in regions that have access to plentiful and cheap energy sources, utilize this energy to power their …

Public Policy Origins Of U.S. Data, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed introduction and overview of public policy origins of U.S. data. Shows how congressional legislation and Office of Management and Budget documents influence compilation and dissemination of U.S. Government data. Stresses how Indiana General Assembly requirements influence compilation of Indiana state agency data and Indiana local government agency data. Places emphasis on roles played in data compilation and dissemination by public policy research institutions/think tanks. Concludes by stressing limitations of data collection by governmental and non-governmental entities.

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Dr. Tele-Corporation: Bridging The Access-To-Care Gap, Nader Amer

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The United States is currently confronting an access-to-healthcare crisis, which rural regions are experiencing at a disproportionate rate. Many commentators have touted telemedicine as a solution for the access-to-care issue. Telemedicine uses video and telecommunication technology to allow physicians to treat patients from distant locations and thus facilitates a more equal distribution of physicians throughout the United States.

Although the telemedicine industry is quickly growing, the corporate practice of medicine doctrine impedes the industry’s expansion and consequently obstructs a viable solution to the access-to-care crisis. Generally, the corporate practice of medicine doctrine prohibits corporations and limited liability companies from employing …

An Analysis And Critique Of Mental Health Treatment In American State Prisons And Proposal For Improved Care, Shelby Hayne

Scripps Senior Theses

Mental health treatment in state prisons is revealed to be highly variable, under-funded, and systematically inadequate. Existing literature exposes this injustice but fails to provide a comprehensive proposal for reform. This paper attempts to fill that gap, outlining a cost-effective, evidence-based treatment proposal, directly addressing the deficits in care revealed through analysis of our current system. In addition, this paper provides historical overviews of the prison system and mental health treatment, utilizing theoretical perspectives to contextualize this proposal in the present state of affairs. Lastly, the evidence is provided to emphasize the potential economic and social benefits of improving mental …

Health Care's Market Bureaucracy, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

The last several decades of health law and policy have been built on a foundation of economic theory. This theory supported the proliferation of market-based policies that promised maximum efficiency and minimal bureaucracy. Neither of these promises has been realized. A mounting body of empirical research discussed in this Article makes clear that leading market-based policies are not efficient — they fail to capture what people want. Even more, this Article describes how the struggle to bolster these policies — through constant regulatory, technocratic tinkering that aims to improve the market and the decision-making of consumers in it — has …

Economic Windfalls And The Affordable Care Act: A Policy Proposal, Joshua Congdon-Hohman, Victor Matheson

Economics Department Working Papers

This paper identifies a major issue with windfall payments under either possible interpretation of the ACA as it currently stands. Several alternatives are proposed that would eliminate the windfalls. We advocate the establishment of a tort award funded “Federal Stabilization Fund” to improve the economic efficiency of future health care awards in the age of the Affordable Care Act

The Developmental Effect Of State Alcohol Prohibitions At The Turn Of The 20th Century, Mary F. Evans, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick, Ashwin Patel

All Faculty Scholarship

We examine the quasi-randomization of alcohol consumption created by state-level alcohol prohibition laws passed in the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century. Using a large dataset of World War II enlistees, we exploit the differential timing of these laws to examine their effects on adult educational attainment, obesity, and height. We find statistically significant effects for education and obesity that do not appear to be the result of pre-existing trends. Our findings add to the growing body of economic studies that examines the long-run impacts of in utero and childhood environmental conditions.

La Comercialización De Cigarrillos En Colombia Y El “Problema Del Autocontrol”: La Restricción De Venta Al Menudeo, Daniel Monroy

Daniel A Monroy C

La “Teoría de la Adicción Racional” y el denominado “Modelo de Inconsistencia Temporal de la Adicción” son los enfoques teóricos dominantes en la economía que tratan de explicar la dinámica del consumo de cigarrillo entendido este como un producto que genera adicción. Aunque la estructura de estos dos enfoques son ciertamente similares, las implicaciones de utilizar uno u otro modelo son bien diferentes, particularmente en lo relativo al criterio normativo relativo a la intervención del Estado respecto de la conducta individual en el mercado. El artículo se concentra en el segundo enfoque indicado, particularmente en el denominado “problema de autocontrol” …

A Cost-Benefit Interpretation Of The "Substantially Similar" Hurdle In The Congressional Review Act: Can Osha Ever Utter The E-Word (Ergonomics) Again?, Adam M. Finkel, Jason W. Sullivan

All Faculty Scholarship

The Congressional Review Act permits Congress to veto proposed regulations via a joint resolution, and prohibits an agency from reissuing a rule “in substantially the same form” as the vetoed rule. Some scholars—and officials within the agencies themselves—have understood the “substantially the same” standard to bar an agency from regulating in the same substantive area covered by a vetoed rule. Courts have not yet provided an authoritative interpretation of the standard.

This Article examines a spectrum of possible understandings of the standard, and relates them to the legislative history (of both the Congressional Review Act itself and the congressional veto …

Tontines For The Invincibles: Enticing Low Risks Into The Health-Insurance Pool With An Idea From Insurance History And Behavioral Economics, Tom Baker, Peter Siegelman

All Faculty Scholarship

Over one third of the uninsured adults in the U.S. below retirement age are between 19 and 29 years old. Young adults, especially men, often go without insurance, even when buying it is mandatory and sometimes even when it is a low cost employment benefit. This paper proposes a new form of health insurance targeted at this group—the “Young Invincibles”—those who (wrongly) believe that they don’t need health insurance because they won’t get sick. Our proposal offers a cash bonus to those who turn out to be right in their belief that they did not really need health insurance. The …

Contingent Valuation Studies And Health Policy, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

This short comment argues that both cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) should be seen as imperfect tools for evaluating health policy. This is true, not only for extra-welfarists, but even for welfarists, since both CBA and CEA can deviate from the use of social welfare functions (SWF). A simple model is provided to illustrate the divergence between CBA, CEA, and the SWF approach. With this insight in mind, the comment considers the appropriate role of contingent-valuation studies. For full text, please see: http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/madler/workingpapers/578A59B6d01.pdf.

Altruism And Innovation In Health Care, Anupam Bapu Jena, Stéphane Mechoulan, Tomas J. Philipson

Stéphane Mechoulan

The joint presence of technological change and consumption externalities is central to health care industries around the world, because medical innovation drives the expansion of the health care sector and altruism seems to motivate many public subsidies. Although traditional economic analysis has proposed well-known remedies to deal with consumption externalities and inefficient technological change in isolation, it lacks clear principles for addressing them jointly. We argue that standard remedies to each of the two problems are inadequate. Focusing on U.S. health care, we provide illustrative calculations of the dynamic inefficiency in the level of research and development (R&D) spending when …

Consumer Protection In An Era Of Globalization, Cary Coglianese, Adam M. Finkel, David T. Zaring

All Faculty Scholarship

With expanding global trade, the challenge of protecting consumers from unsafe food, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products has grown increasingly salient, necessitating the development of new policy ideas and analysis. This chapter introduces the book, Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, a multidisciplinary project analyzing import safety problems and an array of innovative solutions to these problems. The challenge of protecting the public from unsafe imports arises from the sheer volume of global trade as well as the complexity of products being traded and the vast number of inputs each product contains. It is further compounded by the …

Risk Equity: A New Proposal, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

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 …

Why De Minimis?, Matthew D. Adler

All Faculty Scholarship

De minimis cutoffs are a familiar feature of risk regulation. This includes the quantitative “individual risk” thresholds for fatality risks employed in many contexts by EPA, FDA, and other agencies, such as the 1-in-1 million lifetime cancer risk cutoff; extreme event cutoffs for addressing natural hazards, such as the 100-year-flood or 475-year-earthquake; de minimis failure probabilities for built structures; the exclusion of low-probability causal models; and other policymaking criteria. All these tests have a common structure, as I show in the Article. A de minimis test, broadly defined, tells the decisionmaker to determine whether the probability of some outcome is …

Healthy Competition: What’S Holding Back Health Care And How To Free It, Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon

No abstract provided.

Reasonable Emissions Of Greenhouse Gases: Efficient Abatement For A Stock Pollutant, Howard F. Chang

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Subsidizing Addiction: Do State Health Insurance Mandates Increase Alcohol Consumption?, Jonathan Klick, Thomas Stratmann

All Faculty Scholarship

A model of addiction in which individuals are forward looking implies that as the availability of addiction treatment options grows, individuals will consume more of an addictive good. We test this implication using cross-state variation in the adoption of mental health parity mandates that include substance abuse treatments. We examine the effects of these mandates on the consumption of alcohol and find that parity legislation leads to an increase in alcohol consumption. To account for the possible endogeneity of the adoption of mental health parity mandates, we perform an instrumental variables analysis and find that the ordinary least squares estimation …

Does Falling Smoking Lead To Rising Obesity?, Jonathan Gruber, Michael D. Frakes

Faculty Scholarship

The strong negative correlation over time between smoking rates and obesity have led some to suggest that reduced smoking is increasing weight gain in the U.S.. This conclusion is supported by the findings of Chou et al. (2004), who conclude that higher cigarette prices lead to increased body weight. We investigate this issue and find no evidence that reduced smoking leads to weight gain. Using the cigarette tax rather than the cigarette price and controlling for non-linear time effects, we find a negative effect of cigarette taxes on body weight, implying that reduced smoking leads to lower body weights. Yet …