Environmental Policy Since Earth Day I: What Do We Know About the Benefits and Costs?

Data on costs and benefits of the major environmental laws passed during the 1970s are reviewed. The winners in terms of benefit-cost analysis include: getting lead out of gasoline, controlling particulate air pollution, reducing the concentration of lead in drinking water, and the cleanup of hazardous waste sites with the lowest cost per cancer case avoided under Superfund. The losers include: mobile source air pollution control, water pollution control, and many of the regulations and cleanup decisions taken under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund.Environmental Economics and Policy,

The weak jobs recovery: whatever happened to "the great American jobs machine"?

Authors Freeman and Rodgers find that the current recovery, which started in 2001, has been the worst in recent history in terms of job creation. They determine that the slow employment growth of the recovery is not attributable to the poor performance of a particular sector, nor is it concentrated in certain geographic areas. ; The authors conclude that the weak jobs recovery represents a major shift in the link between the labor market and the economy over the business cycle. They also find that the slow job growth has disproportionate effects on groups especially sensitive to business cycle swings, such as African-Americans, new labor-market entrants, out-of-school youth and less educated workers.Labor market ; Business cycles ; Economic conditions

Area Economic Conditions and the Labor Market Outcomes of Young Men in the 1990s Expansion

The current expansion has shattered the length of the previous longest peace-time boom and brought unemployment rates below four percent in 44 percent of metropolitan areas. We estimate the expansion's impact on the labor market outcomes of less-educated men. We find that young men, especially young African American men in tight labor markets experienced a boost in employment and earnings. Adult men had no gains, and their earnings barely changed even in areas with unemployment rates below 4 percent. Youths have higher earnings and employment in low crime states and poorer labor market outcomes in states where incarcerations are high.

Appropriate Environmental Adders

Externalities are costs imposed on third parties without compensation. Pollution is the archetypical externality. It is the pollution externality that has prompted the emerging national debate over whether public utility regulation should be modified to account for externalities. Myrick Freeman and two other authors [Raab, Townsend, this issue] discuss the arguments surrounding the externality debate. These three authors earlier presented similar material at a Legislative Institute, sponsored by the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy\u27s Project for the Study of Regulation and the Environment, for the Utilities Committee of the Maine State Legislature

An Economic Perspective on Environmental Regulation

The laws and regulations that govern the use of environmental resources have complicated effects on our society and our economy. Efforts to regulate environmental impacts are frequently controversial precisely because they have such complicated effects. No single perspective can adequately encompass all of the issues that arise in environmental regulation and environmental protection. Even the terms themselves suggest the fundamentally opposed philosophies that approach the assessment of environmental laws: While proponents of greater environmental activism emphasize the need to protect the environment, critics of more stringent controls emphasize that these laws regulate and limit the actions of individuals. At the PURE \u2792 conference, speakers with very different perspectives were invited to share their views of the important issues in environmental protection and environmental regulation. Myrick Freeman provides an economic perspective

Annual Survey of Virginia Law: Business and Corporate Law

This article surveys major developments between May, 1991 and June 1, 1992 that affect business and corporate law in Virginia. Part I discusses major decisions in United States courts. Part II reviews major decisions in Virginia courts. Part III summarizes laws enacted by the Virginia General Assembly during the 1992 Session