Experimental Rules

When forming policy under conditions of extreme uncertainty, the optimal approach seems to be a process by which the policy decision is divided into multiple stages, or in other words, an experimental approach. The optimal legal vehicle for such policy experimentation is what this Article refers to as “experimental rules,” which are rules that terminate automatically and are designed for the express purpose of generating data during the sunset period that can then be used to determine the optimal policy strategy for the long run. Yet it turns out that agencies rarely adopt such “experimental rules” in the real world. This Article argues that the reason has to do with the political economy, which appears to disfavor experimental rules either because they are more temporary and therefore less valuable to interest groups or because they are more costly to adopt. To overcome these political economy constraints and encourage policy experimentation, this Article proposes having courts apply greater deference to experimental rules (at least during the initial, experimental phase of the multi-stage process). This approach would have the effect of nudging actors in the political economy toward experimental rules, thereby avoiding the possibility of sub-optimal policies becoming entrenched in permanent rules. It would also preserve rules that might otherwise be vacated by courts at least long enough to generate the necessary learning to determine whether they should be implemented on a more permanent basis

Reconsidering the Institutional Design of Federal Securities Regulation

The institutional design literature is interested in the optimality of particular legal institutions, for example, judicial review of agency actions, corporate federalism, and environmental policy. This Article brings such an analysis to bear on federal securities regulation and argues that we could improve upon the current institutional structure. In particular, the Article proposes that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) be given even more decision-making authority than it currently has under the statutory scheme, effectively authorizing the agency to create disclosure rules for any firm that operates in interstate commerce. At the same time, the Article proposes that we place greater controls on the risk of regulatory error at the SEC by creating a statutory scheme that would place limits on the level of regulatory costs that the agency is permitted to impose on the firms that it regulates. By granting the expert agency more decisionmaking authority, while at the same time controlling the risk of error inherent in the SEC’s complicated regulatory task, the Article argues that we could create an institutional structure that generates disclosure rules that are both smarter and less error-prone. The Article also sketches a possible policy approach along these lines

The Economic Burden of Dengue

10.4269/ajtmh.2012.12-0157American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene865743-744AJTH

Dengue, Urbanization and Globalization: The Unholy Trinity of the 21st Century

Dengue is the most important arboviral disease of humans with over half of the world’s population living in areas of risk. The frequency and magnitude of epidemic dengue have increased dramatically in the past 40 years as the viruses and the mosquito vectors have both expanded geographically in the tropical regions of the world. There are many factors that have contributed to this emergence of epidemic dengue, but only three have been the principal drivers: 1) urbanization, 2) globalization and 3) lack of effective mosquito control. The dengue viruses have fully adapted to a human-Aedes aegypti-human transmission cycle, in the large urban centers of the tropics, where crowded human populations live in intimate association with equally large mosquito populations. This setting provides the ideal home for maintenance of the viruses and the periodic generation of epidemic strains. These cities all have modern airports through which 10s of millions of passengers pass each year, providing the ideal mechanism for transportation of viruses to new cities, regions and continents where there is little or no effective mosquito control. The result is epidemic dengue. This paper discusses this unholy trinity of drivers, along with disease burden, prevention and control and prospects for the future

Resurgent vector-borne diseases as a global health problem.

Vector-borne infectious diseases are emerging or resurging as a result of changes in public health policy, insecticide and drug resistance, shift in emphasis from prevention to emergency response, demographic and societal changes, and genetic changes in pathogens. Effective prevention strategies can reverse this trend. Research on vaccines, environmentally safe insecticides, alternative approaches to vector control, and training programs for health-care workers are needed

Testing the Normative Desirability of the Mediating Hierarch

In their influential article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Professors Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout explained how corporate law might be viewed as an attempt at solving what is known as the team production problem. At its core, this problem has to do with the opportunistic behavior that arises when multiple economic actors make investments—whether of labor, capital, or otherwise—in a business venture where these investments are said to be “firm specific” because they cannot be easily withdrawn and redeployed in other projects. The problem is how to construct a governance regime that will create incentives for the various team members to act optimally in light of these firm-specific investments. In this Essay, the author make two contributions. First, the author sketches a modest empirical project for testing the normative desirability of Blair & Stout’s mediating hierarch concept as a solution to the team production problem. Second, this Article argues that, depending on the results of that empirical project, it may be desirable to allow public corporations, as a matter of corporate law, to contract around the shareholder profit maximization norm

Testing the Normative Desirability of the Mediating Hierarch

In their influential article, A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law, Professors Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout explained how corporate law might be viewed as an attempt at solving what is known as the team production problem. At its core, this problem has to do with the opportunistic behavior that arises when multiple economic actors make investments—whether of labor, capital, or otherwise—in a business venture where these investments are said to be “firm specific” because they cannot be easily withdrawn and redeployed in other projects. The problem is how to construct a governance regime that will create incentives for the various team members to act optimally in light of these firm-specific investments. In this Essay, the author make two contributions. First, the author sketches a modest empirical project for testing the normative desirability of Blair & Stout’s mediating hierarch concept as a solution to the team production problem. Second, this Article argues that, depending on the results of that empirical project, it may be desirable to allow public corporations, as a matter of corporate law, to contract around the shareholder profit maximization norm