Will the Net Turn Car Dealers into Dinosaurs? State Limits on Auto Sales Online

Many states have automobile franchise laws that impede or prohibit newcomers from entering the business of selling cars within certain local markets. The laws protect licensed local automobile dealers from certain types of competition; moreover, in many states those laws have the effect of prohibiting anyone except a licensed dealer from selling cars over the Internet. Defenders of the laws assert that they are necessary to protect consumers and dealers themselves. However, those laws harm consumers by impeding competition among sellers of cars. Several economic studies, including a study by the Federal Trade Commission, support that conclusion. In addition, state regulation of Internet commerce threatens to impede interstate commerce. The Constitution's commerce clause was intended to prevent states from erecting trade barriers that protect local businesses at the expense of national trade. The courts, therefore, will frown on states' trying to protect local dealers at the expense of consumers nationwide. The Internet is changing the traditional relationship among manufacturers, middlemen, and consumers. The middleman will not become extinct, but consumers will interact more with manufacturers, as often manufacturers are the best source of information about a product. Protectionist laws that make it harder to compete with traditional dealers harm consumers and will simply lead to stagnation. States should repeal laws that restrict online automobile sales before the Internet economy leaves their citizens behind

Warranty Data Analysis: A Review

Warranty claims and supplementary data contain useful information about product quality and reliability. Analysing such data can therefore be of benefit to manufacturers in identifying early warnings of abnormalities in their products, providing useful information about failure modes to aid design modification, estimating product reliability for deciding on warranty policy and forecasting future warranty claims needed for preparing fiscal plans. In the last two decades, considerable research has been conducted in warranty data analysis (WDA) from several different perspectives. This article attempts to summarise and review the research and developments in WDA with emphasis on models, methods and applications. It concludes with a brief discussion on current practices and possible future trends in WDA

Optimising Age-Replacement and Extended Non-Renewing Warranty Policies in Lifecycle Costing

This paper analyses the life cycle cost of equipment protected by both base and extended warranty policies from a consumer's perspective. We assume that the equipment has two types of failure: minor and catastrophic. A minor failure can be corrected with minimal repair whereas a catastrophic failure can only be removed by a replacement. It is assumed that equipment is maintained at no charge to the consumer during the warranty period, whereas the consumer is fully charged for any maintenance on failures after the extended warranty expires. We formulate the expected life cycle cost of the equipment under a general failure time distribution, and then for special cases we prove that the optimal replacement and extended warranty policies exists where the expected life cycle cost per unit time is minimised. This is examined with numerical examples. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Optimal Burn-in Time and Imperfect Maintenance Strategy for a Warranted Product with Bathtub Shaped Failure Rate

‘Burn-in/preventive maintenance’ programme is an efficient approach used to minimise the warranty servicing cost of a product with bathtub shaped failure rate. Burn-in is a widely used method to improve the quality of product during its ‘infant mortality’ period and preventive maintenance is a scheduled necessary activity carried out during its ‘wear-out’ period. In this paper, an optimisation model is developed to determine the optimal burn-in time and optimal imperfect preventive maintenance strategy that minimises the total mean servicing cost of a warranted product with an age-dependent repair cost. We provide a numerical study to illustrate our results

Optimizing the integrated economic production quantity for a stochastically deteriorating production system under condition-based maintenance

This paper proposes a new integrated economic production quantity (EPQ) and condition-based maintenance (CBM) model for a stochastically deteriorating production system. Inspections are performed periodically to measure the real time degradation. The system fails (out-of-control) whenever its degradation is beyond a critical threshold level. In the out-of-control state, a proportion of nonconforming items are produced. To assess the degradation of the system and to increase the production of conforming items, preventive maintenance (PM) actions are carried out. An integrated EPQ and CBM optimization model that minimizes the total expected cost rate over an infinite time horizon is developed. The objective is to determine a joint optimal EPQ and PM strategy minimizing the sum of inspection/maintenance and setup costs, cost of nonconforming items in addition to inventory holding cost. Numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the proposed approach

Internet Pharmacies and the Need for a New Federalism: Protecting Consumers While Increasing Access to Prescription Drugs

In this article I will argue that Internet pharmacies pose a significant public health problem, as they raise the classic eternal triangle of health care issues--access, quality, and financing--in a new technological context. Part II describes the phenomena of Internet pharmacies, and Part III reviews the present regulatory scheme. Part IV explains why the current legal framework is inadequate to address the public health and safety problems posed by Internet pharmacies, focusing particularly on the jurisdictional, constitutional, and practical obstacles to effective state oversight of Internet pharmacies. Part V argues that comprehensive federal oversight of Internet prescribing and dispensing is necessary to protect individual and public health, and outlines the essential elements of such an approach

Unsafe Sewage Sludge or Beneficial Biosolids?: Liability, Planning, and Management Issues Regarding the Land Application of Sewage Treatment Residuals

Commentators have identified fear of liability as a major deterrent to the widespread land application of sewage sludge. Liability issues regarding land application include not only legal liability, but also market liability as a result of negative public perceptions of the land application of sewage sludge. Under current law, municipal sewage treatment facilities, landowners, farmers, and even lenders are potentially liable for risks arising from sewage sludge application, unless someone else assumes the risk through a clear and legally enforceable mechanism. This article introduces this complex, evolving, and contentious environmental issue. It investigates the various siting and toxic tort liability issues associated with the land application of sewage sludge, and explores some of the risk-sharing mechanisms developed to minimize the liabilities associated with the application of sewage sludge to farmland. It concludes with a recommendation for a public indemnification fund to compensate for losses caused by land application of sewage sludge