Economic Policy Commons^™

Payments As A Tool For Policy, Aaron Klein

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

What are the implications of using payment systems to enforce foreign policy (against Russia, Iran, Cuba, etc...) and domestic policy (on-line poker, cannabis, etc..)? What are the long-term ramifications for the United States, with its dominant status as a global financial system and home to the world reserve currency, using payment systems to achieve its political objectives? In this lecture, Brookings Institution scholar and former deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Treasury, Aaron Klein discusses the pros, cons, and intended and unintended consequences of our current system. He proposes a path forward to maximize economic growth …

How Climate Change Is Altering Energy Finance And Governance In China And The United Arab Emirates, Hans Gebauer

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Climate change is an environmental problem with catastrophic ecological, economic, social, and political impacts. The dramatic scale of the problem has appropriately earned it the name of “climate crisis.” As a protracted crisis, climate change will dominate national and international agendas while transforming institutional politics. Conflicts within policy communities, new interest alignments, social pressure on governments, and ecological collapse could conceivably transform the norms and institutions through which economics, policy, and politics are conducted. Nowhere is this clearer than the energy sector, which is responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions and wherein massive institutional shifts are just beginning to occur. …

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 …

Congressional Briefing: Support America’S Circular Economy By Upcycling Bourbon & Brewing Wastes In Reauthorizing The Farm Bill, Samuel Kessler

Commonwealth Policy Papers

Following state level development of a new spent grain incentive system, leading to KY House Bill 627 in 2022, CPC’s Congressional Summit dialogue considered initial components and possibilities for designing an incentive to upcycle “keystone” organic wastes in regional economies across the US. For member offices, a set of general recommendations are provided for a national spent-grain upcycling incentive pilot program. It is suggested that staff of the Bourbon caucus consult with the references in this briefing and USDA Rural Development to consider further development of an incentive program in the reauthorization of the Farm Bill.

It is further urged …

Tourism, Mapping, Retail And Recreational Trails: A Case Study Of Connectivity Between Trails And Adjacent Downtowns In Anniston, Alabama, Usa, Jennifer Green

Theses

This study examines the estimated increase in economic impact on a geography’s local economy by creating cross-marketing efforts between expanding an established outdoor recreation trail to a closely located city downtown commerce district. This research will analyze the resulting potential rise in sales/lodging tax revenues for that city by mapping the trail and downtown district, and cross-marketing the other to users of both or either venue. Potential increase in economic impact will be estimated utilizing IMPLAN methodology by assessing the economic impact on the local economy that a percentage range of increased spending resulting from this cross-marketing effort could generate.

U.S. Energy Information Administration Information Resources, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides information about the resources produced by U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. These resources cover energy statistics for U.S., states, the United States, and foreign countries. They also cover energy products as varied as coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, petroleum, and renewable energy.

A Qualitative Look Into Repair Practices, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

This research poster is based on a working research paper which moves beyond the traditional scope of repair and examines the Right to Repair movement from a smaller, more personal lens by detailing the 6 categorical impediments as dubbed by Dr. Alissa Centivany (design, law, economic/business strategy, material asymmetry, informational asymmetry, and social impediments) have continuously inhibited repair and affected repair practices, which has consequently had larger implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) on ourselves, our objects, and our world. The poster builds upon my research from last year (see "The Right to Repair: (Re)building a better future"), this time pulling …

Renewable Energy Legislation In Nevada: 2017 - 2021, Peter Grema, Zachary Walusek, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Environment

The purpose of this fact sheet is to summarize legislative actions from the biennial 79th, 80th, and 81st Nevada Legislative Sessions (2017, 2019, and 2021) regarding solar energy production and state efforts to reach 50 percent energy production from renewable sources by 2030. By 2050, Nevada has a statutorily mandated obligation to be a net-zero carbon producer in fulfilling energy production needs from large scale utility services.

Too Much Of A Good Thing? A Governing Knowledge Commons Review Of Abundance In Context, Michael J. Madison, Brett M. Frischmann, Madelyn Sanfilippo, Katherine J. Strandburg

Articles

The economics of abundance, along with the sociology of abundance, the law of abundance, and so forth, should be re-framed, linked, and situated in a common context for empirical rather than conceptual research. Abundance may seem to be a new, big thing, between anxiety over information overload, Big Data, and related technological disruptions. But scholars know that abundance is an ancient phenomenon, which only seemed to disappear as twentieth century social science focused on scarcity instead. Restoring the study of abundance, and figuring out how to solve the problems that abundance might create, means shedding disciplinary blinders and going back …

Government By Code? Blockchain Applications To Public Sector Governance, Pedro Bustamante, Meina Cai, Marcela Gomez, Colin Harris, Prashabnt Krishnamurthy, Wilson Law, Michael J. Madison, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Tymofiy Mylovanov, Nataliia Shapoval, Annette Vee, Martin B. H. Weiss

Articles

Studies of blockchain governance can be divided into analyses of the governance of blockchains (such as rules and power dynamics within a given network) and governance by blockchains (such as how blockchains can be implemented to improve self-governance of community-based peer production networks). Less emphasis has been placed on applications of distributed ledgers to public sector governance. Our review clarifies that the decentralization and distributive features that enable blockchains to link up loosely connected private organizations and public agencies to improve efficiency and transparency of government transactions. However, most blockchain applications lack clear advantages over the conventional digital recording of …

Strengthening The Southern Nevada Workforce Pipeline, Katie M. Gilbertson

Student Research

Workforce development has been a keystone in the discussion of economic diversification of Las Vegas for decades. The leisure and hospitality industry is the lifeline for the Southern Nevada economy due to the reliance on tourism as the city’s main economic driver. The leisure and hospitality industry requires physical labor and more face-to-face customer interaction than other employment sectors. Thus, these jobs often do not require high educational attainment, but rather sharp soft skills like effective listening, nonverbal communication, and negotiation strategies. While these are valuable traits, the lack of educational attainment within the leisure and hospitality workforce suppresses employees’ …

The Application Of The Right To Be Forgotten In The Machine Learning Context: From The Perspective Of European Laws, Zeyu Zhao

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The right to be forgotten has been evolving for decades along with the progress of different statutes and cases and, finally, independently enacted by the General Data Protection Regulation, making it widely applied across Europe. However, the related provisions in the regulation fail to enable machine learning systems to realistically forget the personal information which is stored and processed therein.

This failure is not only because existing European rules do not stipulate standard codes of conduct and corresponding responsibilities for the parties involved, but they also cannot accommodate themselves to the new environment of machine learning, where specific information can …

Blockchain Networks As Knowledge Commons, Ilia Murtazashvili, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin B. H. Weiss, Michael J. Madison

Articles

Researchers interested in blockchains are increasingly attuned to questions of governance, including how blockchains relate to government, the ways blockchains are governed, and ways blockchains can improve prospects for successful self-governance. Our paper joins this research by exploring the implications of the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to analyze governance of blockchains. Our novel contributions are making the case that blockchain networks represent knowledge commons governance, in the sense that they rely on collectively-managed technologies to pool and manage distributed information, illustrating the usefulness and novelty of the GCK methodology with an empirical case study of the evolution of Bitcoin, …

Tech Innovation Capacity In Mountain West Metros, Ally M. Beckwith, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet highlights data on the tech innovation capacity in Mountain West metropolitan areas, as originally reported in 2019 by Robert D. Atkinson, Mark Muro, and Jacob Whiton from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. Tech innovation is defined as advanced industries that are America’s 50 high-R&D, high-STEM manufacturing, energy, and services industries ranging from aerospace and automobile manufacturing to solar electricity generation to internet publishing to bio-tech. Tech innovation is essential to the future of America’s economy. However, “superstar” metropolitan areas creating a regional imbalance within the innovation sector. The Brookings report examines metropolitan areas that are potential …

Addressing The Divisions In Antitrust Policy, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This is the text of an interview conducted in writing by Professor A. Douglas Melamed, Stanford Law School.

The Right To Repair: (Re)Building A Better Future, Jumana Labib

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The goal of this research project was to take a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary approach to research and examine the Right to Repair movement’s progress, current repair practices, impediments, and imperatives, and the various large-scale implications (environmental, economic, social, etc.) stemming from diminished consumer freedom as a result of increased corporate greed and lack of governmental regulations with regards to repair and the environment. This poster exhibits the highlights of my general research project on the Right to Repair movement over the course of this four month internship, and aims to disseminate information about the movement to the wider public in an …

Appreciating The Overlooked Contributions Of The New Harvard School, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

My colleague, Herbert Hovenkamp, is almost universally recognized as the most cited and the most authoritative US antitrust scholar. Among his many honors, his status as the senior author of the authoritative Areeda and Hovenkamp treatise makes him the unquestioned leader of the New Harvard School, which has long served as the bellwether for how courts are likely to resolve emerging issues in modern antitrust doctrine. Unfortunately, its defining tenets and its positions on emerging issues remain surprisingly obscure. My contribution to this festschrift explores the core commitments that distinguish the New Harvard School from other approaches to antitrust. It …

Lessons Learned: Alejandro Latorre, Maryann Haggerty

Journal of Financial Crises

At the time of the 2007-09 global financial crisis, Alejandro Latorre was an assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). He was active in the bailout of American International Group (AIG) from its inception to the end, when AIG repaid its outstanding obligations to both the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury. This Lessons Learned summary is based on a Feb. 26, 2020, interview. He emphasized that the views discussed here are his own, not the views of anyone else currently or previously within the Federal Reserve System or the views of his current employer.

Propertizing Fair Use, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In its current form, fair use doctrine provides a personal defense that applies narrowly to the specific use by the specific user. The landmark case of Google v. Oracle, currently pending before the Supreme Court, illustrates why this is problematic. Even if the Court were to rule that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API’s was fair, the ruling would not protect the numerous parties that developed Java applications for the Android operating system; it would only shelter Google and Google’s particular use. This is not an isolated problem; the per use/per user rule cuts across fair uses of copyrighted …

Is The Digital Economy Too Concentrated?, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Concentration in the digital economy in the United States has sparked loud criticism and spurred calls for wide-ranging reforms. These reforms include everything from increased enforcement of existing antitrust laws, such as challenging more mergers and breaking up firms, to an abandonment of the consumer welfare standard. Critics cite corruption and more systemic public choice problems, while others invoke the populist origins of antitrust to slay the digital Goliaths. On the other side, there is skepticism regarding these arguments. This chapter continues much of that skepticism.

New Kid On The Blockchain: The Rise Of Cryptocurrency In The Global Arena: Humanitarian Usage With Blockchain, Rhonda S. Binda

Open Educational Resources

In 2018, the world was shaken by the fast rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that use a decentralized, blockchain technology for payment transfers outside of the traditional banking system. The potential impact this alternative form of banking could have in the medium and long term on the over 2 billion people globally unbanked is tremendous. Additionally, blockchain itself is being used for value transfer combined with bio and genetic tagging technologies in refugee camps for example, bringing to rise a new era where technology for development is disrupting education, healthcare and security programs globally.

Brave New World - The Rise Of Cities Globally: Urbanizationmeets Technological Innovation And Digitization, Rhonda S. Binda

Open Educational Resources

The trifecta of globalization, urbanization and digitization have created new opportunities and challenges across our nation, cities, boroughs and urban centers. Cities are in a unique position at the center of commerce and technology becoming hubs for innovation and practical application of emerging technology. In this rapidly changing 24/7 digitized world, city governments worldwide are leveraging innovation and technology to become more effective, efficient, transparent and to be able to better plan for and anticipate the needs of its citizens, businesses and community organizations. This class will provide the framework for how cities and communities can become smarter and more …

How Technology-Based Start-Ups Support U.S. Economic Growth, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet examines the trends of technology-based start-ups within the United States and specific states in the Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico) across the top 10 technology industries in 2016, using data provided by a report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Justice Department's New Position On Patents, Standard Setting, And Injunctions, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

A deep split in American innovation policy has arisen between new economy and old economy innovation. In a recent policy statement, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department takes a position that tilts more toward the old economy. Its December, 2019, policy statement on remedies for Standard Essential Patents issued jointly with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology reflects this movement.

The policy statement as a whole contains two noteworthy problems: one is a glaring omission, and the other is a mischaracterization of the scope of antitrust liability. Both positions are strongly …

Digitalization And The American Workforce, Mary Blankenship, Caitlin Saladino, William E. Brown

Economic Development & Workforce

This Fact Sheet examines the rate of digitalization within the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) of the Mountain West division using the findings and data from Digitalization and the American Workforce, a report from the Brookings Institution.

Intellectual Property And Competition, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All 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 …

An Assessment Of The Sharing Economy And Its Policy Solutions Through The Lens Of Sustainability, Chloe An

Pomona Senior Theses

This senior thesis in environmental analysis explores the promise of sustainability of the sharing economy, its shortcomings from this positive potential, and possible policy solutions to help it reach its fullest, positive potential. At its core, the sharing economy enables shared access to goods and services that would otherwise sit in idle or underutilized capacity – popular platforms such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and craigslist all fall within the sharing economy. By enabling affordable and convenient access to goods that would otherwise sit idle, the sharing economy encourages maximal use of a good that already exists rather than seeking out …

Optimizing Regulation For An Optimizing Economy, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

Much economic activity in the United States today emanates from technological advances that optimize through contextualization. Innovations as varied as Airbnb and Uber, fintech firms, and precision medicine are transforming major sectors in the economy by customizing goods and services as well as refining matches between available resources and interested buyers. The technological advances that make up the optimizing economy create new challenges for government oversight of the economy. Traditionally, government has overseen economic activity through general regulations that aim to treat all individuals equally; however, in the optimizing economy, business is moving in the direction of greater individualization, not …

Antitrust And The Design Of Production, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All 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, or …

The Gettysburg Economic Review, Volume 10, Spring 2017

Gettysburg Economic Review

No abstract provided.