Putting the Legal Profession’s Monopoly on the Practice of Law in a Global Context

When considering the proper scope of the U.S. legal profession’s monopoly, regulators and commentators may find it useful to compare the scope of the U.S. monopoly with the legal profession monopolies found in other countries. This Article surveys what we know—and do not know—about the scope of the monopoly in countries other than the United States. The Article finds that the state of knowledge on this topic is relatively undeveloped, that the scope of the U.S. legal profession’s monopoly appears to be larger than the scope of the monopoly found in some other countries, but that the “conventional wisdom” may be incorrect with respect to the scope of the legal profession’s monopoly outside of the United States. It discusses some relatively new developments that may contribute to our knowledge in this area, including reports from the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the International Bar Association. It also suggests that relatively new organizations, such as the International Conference of Legal Regulators and the International Association of Legal Ethics, might contribute to our knowledge about legal regulation around the world

How will unemployment fare following the recession?

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the U.S. unemployment rate has risen more than four percentage points. Similar sharp increases in unemployment have occurred in other severe recessions, such as those in 1973-75 and 1981-82. In the aftermath of those severe recessions, the economy rapidly recovered and unemployment quickly declined. ; Will unemployment behave similarly following this recession? One reason why unemployment may not fall as quickly this time is that the labor market has changed substantively since the early 1980s. In the two recoveries since then, not only did unemployment continue to climb, but it remained persistently high in what have been termed "jobless recoveries." To the extent that labor market changes were responsible for these jobless recoveries, unemployment following the current recession may also be slow to recover. ; A second reason unemployment may not fall quickly this time is that the recession has been coupled with a systemic banking crisis. While the United States has not had many instances of similar crises in the past, evidence from the experiences of other countries may shed light on how future unemployment in the United States is likely to behave. In general, the international data reveal large and persistent increases in unemployment in the aftermath of such events. ; Knotek and Terry examine these factors and quantify their potential implications for the future U.S. unemployment rate. Their analysis suggests that recent trends in labor markets, combined with the presence of a banking crisis in the current recession, raise the likelihood that unemployment will recover much more slowly from this recession than past episodes of severe recession may suggest. Moreover, such a slow recovery has the potential to raise important questions for policymakers, including the level of unemployment consistent with their goals.

Markov-chain approximations of vector autoregressions: application of general multivariate-normal integration techniques

Discrete Markov chains can be useful to approximate vector autoregressive processes for economists doing computational work. One such approximation method first presented by Tauchen (1986) operates under the general theoretical assumption of a transformed VAR with diagonal covariance structure for the process error term. We demonstrate one simple method of more conveniently treating this approximation problem in practice using readily available multivariate-normal integration techniques to allow for arbitrary positive-semidefinite covariance structures. Examples are provided using processes with non-diagonal and singular non-diagonal error covariances.

From GATS to APEC: The Impact of Trade Agreements on Legal Services

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the treatment of legal services in the United States‘ international trade agreements. Although many individuals are now familiar with the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), far fewer realize that legal services are included in at least fifteen international trade agreements to which the United States is a party. This article begins by identifying those trade agreements and other developments including the 2009 Legal Services Initiative of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The article continues by explaining the structure of the GATS and comparing its provisions to the provisions found in the NAFTA and in other international trade agreements. The article includes several tables that compare the structure and content of the fifteen trade agreements applicable to legal services. The fourth section of the article reviews legal services-related implementation efforts, including GATS Track #1 developments related to the Doha Round negotiations, GATS Track #2 developments regarding the development of ―any necessary disciplines,‖ implementation efforts for other trade agreements, and developments that are indirectly related to these trade agreements. The final section of the article addresses the impact of trade agreements on U.S. lawyer regulation. It concludes that these trade agreements, which reflect larger developments in our society, have affected the vocabulary, landscape and stakeholders involved in U.S. lawyer regulation

Alternative methods of solving state-dependent pricing models

We use simulation-based techniques to compare and contrast two methods for solving state-dependent pricing models: discretization, which solves and simulates the model on a grid; and collocation, which relies on Chebyshev polynomials. While both methods produce qualitatively similar results, statistically significant quantitative differences do arise. We present evidence favoring discretization over collocation in this context, given a lack of robustness in the latter.