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The The following is the second of two Dan Farber blog entries reposted today from LegalPlanet. The key to understanding the economics of environmental protection is the concept of externalities.  An externality is simply a cost that one person or firm imposes on another. In general, an externality means that an activity is causing more […]

A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events. A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake. This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors. As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains: The regulation […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld a district court ruling that the federal government is liable for damage from the Katrina storm surge that went up the MRGO canal into the city. As I read the opinion, it is limited in three ways. First, it is […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Governor Romney has endorsed an idea called regulatory budgeting, but it really means capping protection for public health. Romney’s position paper explains the concept as follows: To force agencies to limit the costs they are imposing on society, and to provide the certainty that businesses crave, a system of regulatory caps […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Of course, not everyone agrees that CBA is good in the first place.  It remains anathema to many environmentalists.  My own view is that it can be a useful tool so long as its limitations are clearly understood. But just because something is good doesn’t mean that more is better.  My […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. I’ve done several postings about the theory that regulatory uncertainty causes unemployment.  I’m skeptical of the claim as a general matter, but if there’s any validity to it, one of the major causes of regulatory uncertainty is the Tea Party, along with other libertarians and opponents of regulation. It’s not hard […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. A current conservative refrain is the regulatory uncertainty is holding back the economy.  Consider an editorial entitled “Obama’s regulatory flood is drowning economic growth”: Businesses large and small face more uncertainty today about the federal regulatory environment than at any point since the New Deal . . . . Seeing this […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. I should probably start by putting my cards on the table. I’m not really an advocate of cap and  trade as compared with other forms of regulation.  What I care about is getting effective carbon restrictions in place, whether they take the form of cap and trade, a carbon tax, industry-wide […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The Supreme Court decided the AEP case.  The jurisdictional issues (standing and the political question doctrine) got punted.  The Court said that the lower court rulings were affirmed by an equally divided court.  So far as I know, this is the first time that the Court has ever done that and […]