Implementing Privacy Policy: Who Should Do What?

Academic scholarship on privacy has focused on the substantive rules and policies governing the protection of personal data. An extensive literature has debated alternative approaches for defining how private and public institutions can collect and use information about individuals. But, the attention given to the what of U.S. privacy regulation has overshadowed consideration of how and by whom privacy policy should be formulated and implemented. U.S. privacy policy is an amalgam of activity by a myriad of federal, state, and local government agencies. But, the quality of substantive privacy law depends greatly on which agency or agencies are running the show. Unfortunately, such implementation-related matters have been discounted or ignored— with the clear implication that they only need to be addressed after the “real” work of developing substantive privacy rules is completed. As things stand, the development and implementation of U.S. privacy policy is compromised by the murky allocation of responsibilities and authority among federal, state, and local governmental entities—compounded by the inevitable tensions associated with the large number of entities that are active in this regulatory space. These deficiencies have had major adverse consequences, both domestically and internationally. Without substantial upgrades of institutions and infrastructure, privacy law and policy will continue to fall short of what it could (and should) achieve

Lifecycles of Competition Systems: Explaining Variation in the Implementation of New Regimes

The aim of the study was to investigate the crimes and punishments that were commonly occurring between the years 1601-1651, and how the distribution was between men and women represented in the court in district Sjuhundra and Njurunda district. To answer these questions, a quantitative examination of court records conducted in which the crimes and punishments have been categorized. The results that have emerged have been the basis for the conclusions issued in the essay. The results showed that the most common target types were various civil and propertycase and the most common punishments were sentenced to fines and settlements. It was predominantly men who were in the court, the proportion of women was between 13-22%. The conclusion is that men were increasingly confronted with the court than the women and the crimes and punishments in comparison to the two districts were relatively equal

Antitrust Policy: A Century of Economic and Legal Thinking

Passage of the Sherman Act in the United States in 1890 set the stage for a century of jurisprudence regarding monopoly, cartels, and oligopoly. Among American statutes that regulate commerce, the Sherman Act is unequaled in its generality. The Act outlawed "every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade" and "monopolization" and treated violations as crimes. By these open-ended commands, Congress gave federal judges extraordinary power to draw lines between acceptable cooperation and illegal collusion, between vigorous competition and unlawful monopolization. By enlisting the courts to elaborate the Sherman Act' s broad commands, Congress gave economists a singular opportunity to shape competition policy. Because the statute' s vital terms directly implicated economic concepts, their interpretation inevitably would invite contributions from economists. What emerged is a convergence of economics and law without parallel in public oversight of business. As economic learning changed, the contours of antitrust doctrine and enforcement policy eventually would shift, as well. This article follows the evolution of thinking about competition since 1890 as reflected by major antitrust decisions and research in industrial organization. We divide the U.S. antitrust experience into five periods and discuss each period' s legal trends and economic thinking in three core areas of antitrust: cartels, cooperation, or other interactions among independent firms; abusive conduct by dominant firms; and mergers.

The Importance of History to the Design of Competition Policy Strategy: The Federal Trade Commission and Intellectual Property Law

The Article\u27s framework for considering the value of history in shaping strategy is the effort of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to apply its competition policy powers to issues involving intellectual property (IP). The Article chooses the example of intellectual property because of its importance to the modern work of the FTC and the increasingly significant place that intellectual property and, more generally, technology-driven innovation hold in the field of competition policy. To provide context for the discussion, Part II of the Article presents a profile of the FTC\u27s modern competition policy initiatives concerning intellectual property. Part III then reviews how, since the major reforms of the FTC in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Commission has sought to improve the agency\u27s performance by studying the past. Part IV uses the most recent FTC initiatives, discussed in Part II, along with the Commission\u27s past experience with historically oriented research, discussed in Part III, to suggest prescriptions about how the FTC and other competition authorities can use history to develop effective competition policy strategies

Competition Policy, Consumer Protection, and Economic Disadvantage

This Essay discusses how well-conceived competition policies can serve the poor and reduce barriers that reinforce economic disadvantage. It first identifies some of the phenomena that competition policy programs usefully can address to improve the welfare of economically disadvantaged populations. The Essay then describes how consumer protection programs can complement competition policy measures by punishing and deterring serious fraud. The Essay concludes with reflections on the broader contributions to social welfare that competition and consumer protection programs can offer. In addressing these topics I have sought to draw upon examples from my own experiences in the United States and in technical assistance projects

The Institutions of Antitrust Law: How Structure Shapes Substance

Daniel Crane\u27s The Institutional Structure of Antitrust Enforcement ( Institutional Structure ) may do for antitrust law what Essence of Decision did for public administration. Unlike most literature on antitrust law, this superb volume does not address pressing issues of substantive analysis (e.g., when can dominant firms offer loyalty discounts?). Instead, Institutional Structure studies the design and operation of the institutions of U.S. antitrust enforcement. Professor Crane skillfully advances a basic and powerful proposition: to master analytical principles without deep knowledge of the policy implementation mechanism is dangerously incomplete preparation for understanding the U.S. antitrust system, or any body of competition law. Institutions, Professor Crane observes, are a critical and underappreciated driver of an antitrust policy that interacts in many subtle ways with substantive antitrust rules and decisions (p. xi). Institutional Structure demonstrates that the causes of observed policy outcomes, good and bad, often reside in the institutional framework. Seemingly potent conceptual insights may fizzle, or create mischief, if the institutions that must apply them are deformed. Good policy results depend on the strength of what Allison called the path between preferred solution and actual performance. In the language of modern technology, one cannot deliver broadband-quality policy outcomes through dial-up institutions

The Digital Broadband Migration and the Federal Trade Commission: Building the Competition and Consumer Protection Agency of the Future

Three areas of the FTC’s fairly extraordinary portfolio of policymaking responsibilities that affect the development of the internet stand out: (1) competition issues, (2) consumer protection issues, and (3) privacy and data protection. These three areas are linked by the FTC’s creation of policy by experimentation, assessment, and refinement, which ensures the FTC makes wise choices in the face of dramatic technological changes that characterize the internet. The three areas are also linked by institutional multiplicity, which may need to be reconfigured for internet-commerce policy. Effective policy for internet-commerce requires investment in institutional building and implementation because the degree of the skill of implementation and quality of institutional arrangements shape the resulting policy. However, this often fails to occur because incumbent political leaders are motivated to make short-term gains for publicity rather than invest for future gains. Continuous improvement will be a challenge for the FTC in developing and implementing internet-related policies, but they are important due to the highly dynamic nature of the internet. A possible solution lies in treating enhancements to institutional infrastructure and agency capacity as essential duties of leadership and pressing regulators to describe what steps the agency is taking today to make it better in next five or ten years. Another move in the right direction would be adopting the good practices for competition and consumer protection agencies identified in the 2008 FTC self-assessment. Superior internet-related policy will come from investments made today in strong operational methods and institutional frameworks