lessons drawn from the experiences of the International Court of Justice and the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organisation

The guarantee of judicial independence is undoubtedly one of the most important institutional design features of international courts and tribunals. An independence deficit can adversely impact a court’s authority, create a crisis of legitimacy, and undermine the very effectiveness of an international court or tribunal. It can hardly be denied that for an international court to be considered legitimate, a basic degree of independence is a must. An independent judiciary is a precondition to the fair and just resolution of legal disputes. In the context of interstate dispute settlement where the jurisdiction of courts is based on the principle of consent, in the absence of a basic degree of judicial independence, states may not be willing to submit to the jurisdiction of international courts. Comparing and contrasting the International Court of Justice and the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organisation, I assess whether those international judicial mechanisms possess the basic degree of independence required for a court to be able to maintain its credibility so that it can continue to perform its core function of adjudicating interstate disputes. With both those interstate adjudicative bodies constituting the two leading international courts in terms of participation and the sheer number of cases decided, much may be learned from comparing them. I argue there is a case for bolstering the independence of the ICJ; and without immediate reforms to the Appellate Body’s institutional design, its recent demise may become permanent. I conclude that if a basic degree of judicial independence cannot be guaranteed, it is preferable to let a court vanish for a while than to maintain a significantly deficient one

The California Endowment: How Can This Leading Health Equity Funder Bolster Its Community Impact?

The California Endowment (TCE) is actively moving the needle toward health equity through its support of national health reform, changes in school discipline policies and focused attention on the urgent needs of boys and men of color. Its primary grantmaking strategy, Building Healthy Communities (BHC), funds both statewide policy advocacy and targeted investments in 14 communities across California. By investing in efforts to build community power and also directly engaging in advocacy, TCE exemplifies strategic, social justice philanthropy at its best. However, some of TCE's grantmaking practices limit its grantees' effectiveness. To expand its impact, TCE could provide more general operating support, build nonprofit advocacy capacity and better align the large foundation's many efforts

Emerging Trends in Indian Agriculture: What Can We Learn from these?

Agricultural and Food Policy,

CDS Zombies

This paper examines the contract interpretation strategies adopted by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) for its credit derivatives contracts in the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The authors argue that the economic function of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) after Greece is limited and uncertain, partly thanks to ISDA’s insistence on textualist interpretation. Contract theory explanations for textualist preferences emphasise either transactional efficiency or relational factors, which do not fit ISDA or the derivatives market. The authors pose an alternative explanation: the embrace of textualism in this case may be a means for ISDA to reconcile the competing political demands from state regulators and its market constituents. They describe categories of contracts susceptible to such political demands, and consider when and why textualism might be the preferred response

Competing for Refugees: A Market-Based Solution to a Humanitarian Crisis

The current refugee crisis demands novel legal solutions, and new ways of summoning the political will to implement them. As a matter of national incentives, the goal must be to design mechanisms that discourage countries of origin from creating refugees, and encourage host countries to welcome them. One way to achieve this would be to recognize that persecuted refugee groups have a financial claim against their countries of origin, and that this claim can be traded to host nations in exchange for acceptance. Modifications to the international apparatus would be necessary, but the basic legal elements of this proposal already exist. In short, international law can and should give refugees a legal asset, give host nations incentives to accept them, and give oppressive countries of origin the bill

Engineering an Orderly Greek Debt Restructuring

For some months now, discussions over how Greece will restructure its debt have been constrained by the requirement that the deal be “voluntary” – implying that Greece would continue debt service to any creditors that choose retain their old bonds rather than tender them in an exchange offer. In light of Greece’s deep solvency problems and lack of agreement with its creditors so far, the notion of a voluntary debt exchange is increasingly looking like a mirage. In this essay, we describe and compare three alternative approaches that would achieve an orderly restructuring but avoid an outright default: (1) “retrofitting” and using a collective action clause (CAC) that would allow the vast majority of outstanding Greek government bonds to be restructured with the consent of a supermajority of creditors; (2) combining the use of a CAC with an exit exchange, in which consenting bondholders would receive a new English-law bond with standard creditor protections and lower face value; (3) an exit exchange in which a CAC would only be used if participation falls below a specified threshold. All three exchanges are involuntary in the sense that creditors that dissent or hold out are not repaid in full

Utility rebates for ENERGY STAR appliances: Are they effective?

We estimate the impact of utility cash rebates on the market share of ENERGY STAR appliances by exploiting the variation in timing and size of rebates across US states. We find that a dollar increase in the population-weighted utility rebate raises the share of ENERGY STAR qualified clothes washers by 0.4%, but does not affect dishwasher and refrigerator shares. Using information on energy saved by an ENERGY STAR appliance and assuming a redemption rate of 40%, the cost per tonne of carbon saved is about $140 for the clothes washers rebate program. The corresponding cost of a megawatt hour saved, about$28, is lower than the estimated cost of building and operating an additional power plant and the average on-peak spot price. We conclude that the ENERGY STAR clothes washers rebate program is, on average, a cost-effective way for utilities to reduce electricity demand

THE EFFECT OF FREE TRADE ON POLLUTION POLICY AND WELFARE

In this paper I consider a small economy facing accession to a trade agreement. Before accession the government has control over trade and environmental policy. After accession it retains control over environmental policy but has to allow free trade. Through the analysis I highlight an effect of free trade neglected in the literature so far. Adoption of free trade shifts the economic incidence of pollution tax from consumers onto producers of the polluting good. Under fairly plausible conditions, this change in incidence can reduce the distortion in pollution tax. Even though the choice of accession is influenced by special interest groups, I find that accession can be accompanied by an improvement in pollution policy and an increase in aggregate welfare.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade,

The Hausmann-Gorky Effect

For over a century, legal scholars have debated the question of what to do about the debts incurred by despotic governments; asking whether successor non-despotic governments should have to pay them. That debate has gone nowhere. This paper examines whether an Op Ed written by Harvard economist, Ricardo Hausmann, in May 2017, may have shown an alternative path to the goal of increasing the cost of borrowing for despotic governments. Hausmann, in his Op Ed, had sought to produce a pricing penalty on the entire Venezuelan debt stock by trying to shame JPMorgan into removing Venezuelan bonds from its emerging market index. JPMorgan did not comply, but there was a pricing penalty. Intriguingly, the penalty hit only one bond; an issue by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company that went on the market two days prior to Hausmann’s piece. That bond then began to carry the name in the market of “Hunger Bond.” Using quantitative data and interviews with investors, we try to understand the causes of the Hunger Bond penalty and ask whether there are lessons for policy maker