Regulatory Policy

In this paper we argue that service-based competition may deter (or delay) facility-based competition. Hence, to the extent that service-based and facility-based entry are perceived as substitute strategies by the entrants, regulatory policies that are aimed at each one of them may exhibit conflicts. We develop our arguments on the basis of our formal studies, , where an incumbent and an entrant compete for providing high-bandwidth services. We claim that an incumbent who faces an effective threat of facility-based competition can strategically delay facility-based entry by providing attractive terms of access to its facilities. The delay that is introduced by attractive terms of access is by virtue of a replacement effect, which may also affect the choice of technology to be eventually built by the entrant. * Dogan thanks ENST -Paris for its hospitality during the time part of this research was conducted.

Regulatory policy for transgenic live- stock is being developed concurrently with several rap- idly advancing technologies for creating such animals. Adequacy of ethical, welfare, physiological, and envi- ronmental criteria applied to the selection of transgenes will have substantial implications for acceptance. Con- current evolution of regulatory policy and oversight will determine whether the existing collaboration of animal drug, veterinary biologic, environmental, and food safety agencies is appropriate. Industry infrastructure

Цель настоящей статьи состоит в анализе способов оценки обязательных требований в системе правовых средств регуляторной политики. Исследование опирается на толкование нормативных предписаний, закрепленных в федеральном законе «Об обязательных требованиях», и их влияние на реализацию механизма «регуляторной гильотины».
Методология исследования базируется на сочетании формально-юридического и сравнительно-правового
методов познания правовых явлений с методами социального познания, адаптации статистической информации к
изучению правовых процессов.
Автор приходит к выводу, что в силу активного реформирования законодательства в области экономики и реализации «регуляторной гильотины» появляется потребность в научном осмыслении принципов и правовых средств
оценки обязательных требований с точки зрения практики нормотворчества. Обязательные требования выступают
ключевым параметром проектирования нормативных правовых актов, а экономическое и правовое обоснование
внедрения новых типов обязательных требований в новых условиях основывается на качественном проведении публичных консультаций и диалоге с экспертами.

В коллективной монографии, посвященной 10-летнему юбилею института оценки регулирующего воздействия в России, анализируется опыт формирования и развития системы публичных обсуждений проектов нормативных правовых актов на наднациональном, федеральном и региональном уровнях. Рассмотрены концептуальные подходы к пониманию сущности регуляторной политики и ее инструментов, выявлены условия эффективного применения на практике правовых средств регуляторной политики, среди которых механизмы оценки регулирующего воздействия, оценки фактического
воздействия и «регуляторная гильотина». В приложении к работе представлен постатейный комментарий к Федеральному закону «Об обязательных требованиях в Российской Федерации».

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that a new and unforeseen threat easily outmatched political-administrative systems currently in place. Our commentary on the Italian case contributes to the call for public administration scholars to incorporate crisis management into the main research agendas of the field. We focus on regulatory capacity that is needed to tackle the effects of COVID-19. Under crisis conditions of radical urgency and uncertainty, the Italian regulatory policy has been based on temporary, fast-track procedures. The latter have been regularly applied when Italian governments confront with natural disasters and prompt action is ensured by a repertoire of extraordinary measures running in parallel to burdensome ordinary procedures. We discuss the implications of this “two-track” approach for governance capacity and legitimacy. We also extrapolate existing trends and engage with projection of future developments.

This paper calls for a reevaluation of the pollution problem in order to devise efficient strategies for its control. It contends that a fundamental cause of pollution is inefficiency in input-use during the production process. This inefficiency manifests itself as input-waste and polluting residues. Precision technologies can increase the effectiveness of inputs used in production and reduce pollution generation. Despite their potential economic and ecological benefits, adoption of precision technologies has been slow. This paper presents a conceptual framework to identify and analyze the specific factors that affect their diffusion among microunits. These include various heterogeneous characteristics of microunits, prices which do not reflect the relevant scarcities due to distortionary regulatory policies and lack of institutional mechanisms for efficient allocation of inputs and outputs. It rationalizes the observed variations in the appropriate choice of technology across microunits and argues for the need to broaden the range of incentive-based instruments for environmental protection beyond pollution taxes. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

This paper explores the economic impacts of regalatory and legislative intervention in the Clean Air Act Amendment's sulfur dioxide (SO 2) allowance trading market. This intervention is of two types: (1) direct intervention through laws or regulatory orders that constrain compliance options of market participants, and (2) indirect intervention, reflected in utility decision making, and caused by a lack of regulatory policies that clarify the treatment of allowance market transactions. The paper uses a dynamic, linear programming model to empirically estimate the economic impacts of this intervention. An example of direct intervention is explored by modeling actual legislative and/or regulatory proposals in New York and Wisconsin; indirect intervention is explored through the development of a cost-uncertainty tradeoff curve. The results indicate that both types of intervention are costly and these costs must be weighed against any expected social benefits. Corresponding author. Tel. 540-568-3202. Present address: James Madison University College of Integrated Science and Technology Alexander, University Boulevard, Harrisonburg, VA 22801, USA. The authors are grateful for the comments of several anonymous referees. The views presented in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect official views of their respective organizations. 0928-7655/95/$09.50 © 1995 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved SSD! 0928-7655(95 )00006-2 Jd. Winebrake et al./ Resource and Energy Economics 17 (1995) 239-260 JEL classification: C61; H73; L94; Q25

This paper reports the results of the quantitative analysis of international experience of the relationship between infrastructure investment in the deployment of capacity that can carry large volumes of voice and data traffic and regulatory policy changes in the telecommunications sectors. It looks at the relationship between infrastructure investment for these infrastructure assets and the access pricing r! egimes for local exchange carriers in the United States and Europe. It then looks at the relationship between various aspects of regulatory and institutional policy changes in Europe and how they affect access prices.

In the light of several ongoing antitrust investigations in the E.U. and the U.S., the following research paper analyzes whether 'big tech'-same as the big banks-need special regulatory (and economic-political) attention and if so, how an updated form of regulatory policy for the digital era could look like. It does so by utilizing-and reviving-the normative and business-ethical ideals of German 'neoliberalism', also known as (classical) ordoliberalism. Especially, Walter Eucken's work has the potential to inform and enrich the current debate concerning the regulation of big tech. The main goal of the paper is to outline a potentially new regulatory framework-one that combines (and revises) Eucken's ordoliberalism with the competition policy of the European Union.

Surface coal mining in Appalachia has caused extensive replacement of forest with non-forested land cover, much of which is unmanaged and unproductive. Although forested ecosystems are valued by society for both marketable products and ecosystem services, forests have not been restored on most Appalachian mined lands because traditional reclamation practices, encouraged by regulatory policies, created conditions poorly suited for reforestation. Reclamation scientists have studied productive forests growing on older mine sites, established forest vegetation experimentally on recent mines, and identified mine reclamation practices that encourage forest vegetation re-establishment. Based on these findings, they developed a Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) that can be employed by coal mining firms to restore forest vegetation. Scientists and mine regulators, working collaboratively, have communicated the FRA to the coal industry and to regulatory enforcement personnel. Today, the FRA is used routinely by many coal mining firms, and thousands of mined hectares have been reclaimed to restore productive mine soils and planted with native forest trees. Reclamation of coal mines using the FRA is expected to restore these lands' capabilities to provide forest-based ecosystem services, such as wood production, atmospheric carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, watershed protection, and water quality protection to a greater extent than conventional reclamation practices.

There is a large body of literature examining the determinants of juvenile crime, which highlights economic, family, peer, and educational factors associated with delinquency and recidivism, and the important roles of social service and educational systems. Two factors, substance abuse and mental illness are also potentially important. The observed high correlations between crime, substance abuse and poor mental health suggests that factors which reduce substance abuse and improve mental health may also be effective in reducing criminal activities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of mental health and substance abuse treatment in reducing crimes committed by juveniles. This paper uses detention data in conjunction with substance abuse and mental health treatment data for youth enrolled in the Colorado state foster care program over a three year period. Duration models are used to examine the structural determinants of detention. We analyze the impact of trea...

This paper seeks to interrogate the impact of legislation, regulations, regulatory action and inaction on the development of the insurance industry in Nigeria. The paper will in the introductory part review the historical trajectory and background of the development of insurance in Nigeria, while also explaining key concepts of the insurance practice and transaction. The section will also review the impact of this development on the economy, while drawing comparatives from the growth and development of the sector in other similar jurisdictions especially South Africa and Ghana.In the sections that follow, the regulatory framework of the insurance sector will be reviewed with particular focus on the state of the law and its historical development, the regulator, her mandate and scorecard, and regulations, guidelines and rules by the regulator, and how far they have contributed towards the mandate of the regulator.In the 3rd section, the impact of the regulations and regulatory interventions on the sectoral development will be reviewed while the 4th section will look at the limitations and challenges these regulations have suffered or inflicted on the sector.The 5th Section will look at prospects for growth and conclude with recommendations believed to have the capacity to foster growth in the sector.

Sri Lanka's telecommunications industry was profoundly transformed during the 1990s and became one of the most open and competitive among developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This was driven by a series of government initiatives to open up the sector to new entrants and greater competition. But after privatisation of the state-owned monopoly became a feasible policy option, and particularly after it was partially privatised in 1997, there has been an apparent shift in government policy away from its previous pro-competitive stance. This paper examines the evolution and present state of Sri Lanka's telecommunications industry, the regulatory policy framework, and pertinent competition policy issues in the sector, with particular attention to the apparent shift of government policies away from its earlier strong pro-competitive stance.

Summary The major causes of cancer are: 1) smoking, which accounts for 31% of U.S. cancer deaths and 87% of lung cancer deaths; 2) dietary imbalances which account for about another third, e.g., lack of sufficient amounts of dietary fruits and vegetables. 3) chronic infections, mostly in devel- oping countries; and 4) hormonal factors, which are influenced primarily by lifestyle.

Hydrogen is emerging beyond its conventional role as an additive component for gasoline production, chemical and fertilizer manufacture, and food production to become a promising fuel for transportation and stationary power. Hydrogen offers a potentially unmatched ability to deliver a de-carbonized energy system, thereby addressing global climate change concerns, while simultaneously improving local air quality and reducing dependence on imported

This Article tackles a question that has vexed the administrative state for the last half century: how to seriously take account of the distributional consequences of regulation. The academic literature has largely accepted the view that distributional concerns should be moved out of the regulatory domain and into Congress’ tax policy portfolio. In doing so, it has overlooked the fact that tax policy is ill suited to provide compensation for significant environmental, health, and safety harms. And the congressional gridlock that has bedeviled us for several decades makes this enterprise even more of a non-starter. 

The focus on negative distributional consequences has become particularly salient recently, playing a significant role in the 2016 presidential election and threatening important, socially beneficial regulatory measures. For example, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, environmental justice groups and coal miner interests have forcefully opposed the regulation of greenhouse gases through flexible regulatory tools, in California and at the federal level, respectively.

The time has come to make distributional consequences a core concern of the regulatory state; otherwise, future socially beneficial regulations could well encounter significant roadblocks. The success of this enterprise requires significant institutional changes in the way in which distributional issues are handled within the Executive Branch. Every President from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama has made cost-benefit analysis a key feature of the regulatory state as a result of the role played by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the Trump Administration is keeping that structure in place. In contrast, executive orders addressing distributional concerns have languished because of the lack of a similar enforcement structure within the Executive Branch. This Article provides the blueprint for the establishment of a standing, broadly constituted interagency body charged with addressing serious negative consequences of regulatory measures on particular groups. Poor or minority communities already disproportionally burdened by environmental harms and communities that lose a significant portion of their employment base are paradigmatic candidates for such action.

The objective of radiologic image compression is to reduce the data volume of and to achieve a low bit rate in the digital representation of radiologic images without perceived loss of image quality. However, the demand for transmission bandwidth and storage space in the digital radiology environment, especially picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) and telera-

The potential environmental hazards and associated public health issues related to exposure to respirable dusts from the vicinity of natural in-place asbestos deposits (commonly referred to as naturally occurring asbestos, NOA) have gained the regulatory and media spotlight in many areas around the United States, such as Libby, MT, Fairfax County, VA, and El Dorado Hills, CA, among others. NOA deposits may be present in a variety of geologic formations. It has been suggested that airborne asbestos may be released from NOA deposits, and absent appropriate engineering controls, may pose a potential health hazard if these rocks are crushed or exposed to natural weathering and erosion or to human activities that create dust. The issue that needs to be addressed at a policy level is the method of assessing exposures to elongated rock fragments ubiquitous in dust clouds in these same environments and the associated risk. Elongated rock fragments and single crystal minerals present in NOA have been construed by some as having attributes, including the health effects, of asbestos fibers. However, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), and the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) found that the scientific evidence did not support this assumption. As in many environmental fields of study, the evidence is often disputed. Regulatory policy is not uniform on the subject of rock fragments, even within single agencies. The core of the issue is whether the risk parameters associated with exposures to commercial asbestos can or should be applied to rock fragments meeting an arbitrary set of particle dimensions used for counting asbestos fibers. Inappropriate inclusion of particles or fragments results in dilution of risk and needless expenditure of resources. On the other hand, inappropriate exclusion of particles or fragments may result in increased and unnecessary risk. Some of the fastest growing counties in the United States are in areas where NOA is known to exist and therefore this issue takes on national significance. This ongoing national dilemma has raised public and business concerns. There has been continuing political and scientific debate and widespread miscommunication over perceived versus actual health risks, the validity of various analytical sampling and testing methods, the questionable necessity and escalating costs of remediation procedures, and the combined negative impact on numerous commercial and public interests. Thus, conflicting research and regulatory positions on the distinctions between and hazards of true asbestos and ordinary rock fragments is all that is presently available to the public until the differing scientific communities and government agencies arrive at a consensus on these issues. The risk assessment methodology and the analytical technology needed to support inferences drawn from existing research are available, but have not been organized and implemented in the manner needed to resolve the NOA controversy.

Presidents have long sought to roll back their predecessors’ regulatory policies. They have typically relied on efforts to repeal regulations and to withdraw unpublished or non-final regulations pursuant to “stop-work” orders directed at agency heads. President Trump is no exception. But rather than stick to the typical playbook, he also made aggressive use of three other instruments: Congressional Review Act disapprovals, requests that courts hold in abeyance pending cases challenging Obama-era regulations, and suspensions of final regulations. Through these strategies, the Trump administration was able to reach a far greater proportion of regulations than would have been possible under prior practices.

This Article identifies this new trend in aggressive regulatory rollbacks and argues that it is likely to become an enduring feature of American politics. In the current climate, aggressive rollback strategies will lead to an important reconceptualization of the Executive Branch in which future one-term presidents are unlikely to see a significant portion of their regulatory output on important matters survive. As a result, when fashioning regulatory policy, future presidents will face significantly different incentives, which will affect a broad set of decisions, from transition planning for an incoming administration, to the timing of regulatory actions relative to a president’s reelection campaign, to electoral strategies.

With reelection now a prerequisite for leaving a durable regulatory legacy, regulatory policy will take on characteristics that are similar to electoral schemes in which multiple votes are necessary for significant decisions. But the justifications that undergird these multiple-vote requirements—legitimacy, stability, and quality—do not support the transformation occurring with the Executive Branch’s regulatory policymaking power. Despite that fact, these features are likely to remain part of the political and administrative landscape, and future presidential administrations will need to adjust to them.

Of all the renewable energy sources used for power generation, biomass energy has experienced the greatest growth over the last decade. Spurred by requirements established in the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA), as well as various tax incentives, biomassbased power generation now provides more than 50 billion kWh of electric energy from 10,000 MW of installed capacity. The overwhelming majority of this capacity, primarily wood-based, has been developed by the nonutility sector. However, the biomass industry is currently facing more difficult market conditions due to a reduction in federal incentives and changes in the generation market, such as lower utility avoided costs, slower demand growth, and greater competition among fuel sources.

Happily, the revolution going on in the telecommunications industry is benign. Technological change and competition are making possible changes considered improbable even 15 years ago. The WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunications Services created a new regime for the world market. Now we must pay close attention to regulatory fundamentals.Every country serious about introducing competition finds that the transition from monopoly

An economic analysis of new meat and poultry inspection rules evaluates the benefits and costs of reducing microbial pathogens and preventing foodborne illness. The new rules require federally-inspected processors and slaughterhouses to adopt Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) systems to identify potential sources of pathogen contamination and establish procedures to prevent contamination. The benefits of reducing pathogens, which include lower medical costs of illness, lower productivity losses, and fewer premature deaths, range from $1.9 billion to $171.8 billion over 20 years, depending upon the level of pathogen control. These benefits will likely exceed the costs of HACCP, which are estimated at between $1.1 and $1.3 billion over 20 years. Small meat and poultry processing firms may bear higher costs under the new regulations than do large firms. Non- regulatory alternatives to improving food safety, such as education, labeling, market-based incentives for path...

The "hydrogen energy station" is one method of hydrogen production at small and medium scales. Unlike more conventional hydrogen station designs where hydrogen is simply delivered or produced on-site with a fuel "reformer" or water electrolyzer and then compressed and dispensed, energy stations would provide multiple functions in the same facility. They would integrate systems for production of electricity for 1) local uses and/or the utility grid, 2) re-use of thermal energy "waste heat" for building heating/cooling needs, and 3) purified hydrogen for refueling vehicles. eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.

Road traffic problems, such as congestion and accidents, are high in many countries, leading to economic losses, environmental damage due to increased pollution, waste of time in congestion and lives lost. In order to reduce these problems, Road Traffic Management Systems (RTMS) are applied, for example, in activities such as controlling, monitoring, and visualizing traffic in motorways and urban roads. The development of RTMS is challenging. RTMS are large socio-technical systems, which means that organizational and regulatory policies, rules, processes and constraints have to be taken into consideration. This framework needs to be represented in what is called the domain architecture. However, defining the domain architecture relates more to the RTMS domain than to the technical solution. The software architecture is fundamental for the organization of the system, comprising the sub-systems, important software components and the relationship between them and the environment, and to document all important technical decisions. In this article, both the domain and the software architecture are proposed for developing RTMS. The approach is used in practice as shown by the HARS case study.

In this paper we discuss how the interests and field theory promoted by public administration as a stakeholder in policy argumentation, directly arise from its problem solving activities, using the framework for public administration problem solving we proposed in [1,2]. We propose that calls for change of policy in public administration mainly arise from model-based diagnosis problem solving.

The Supreme Court has made clear, in the five cases in which it has dealt with this issue, that the major questions doctrine applies only in exceptional cases. In contrast, during its four years in office, the Trump Administration invoked the doctrine routinely in support of its deregulatory assault on the administrative state. In doing so, the Trump Administration construed the major questions doctrine enormously expansively and inconsistently, in ways untethered to the Court’s jurisprudence, turning it into little more than an invitation for courts to strike down regulations the Administration did not favor for policy-based reasons. This pattern is especially problematic considering that unlike individual private litigants, the Justice Department normally strives to develop a consistent approach to important legal doctrines.

The Trump Administration’s most sustained weaponization of the major questions doctrine was against the Clean Power Plan, which regulated the greenhouse gas emissions of existing power plants. And, under the similarly wrongheaded and even broader arguments made by its allies, all greenhouse gas regulations could be suspect on major question grounds.

The Trump Administration’s arguments with respect to the major questions doctrine are not merely of historical interest. They have already found support in lower court decisions and are still being pressed by state attorneys general and other influential litigants; bringing to light their enormously problematic application is important to foreclose their successful revival in future administrations.

This paper compares the historic German discourse on forest functions with the current international debate on ecosystem services and analyzes the factors that may have triggered or inhibited the development and the institutionalization of both underlying concepts and subordinate debates. Ultimately, this comparison aims at drawing conclusions for the present debate on the currently negotiated REDDplus mechanism which can be considered as a major effort to upscale payments for environmental services. Both discourses show some remarkable similaritiesdespite their diverging spatial foci, cultural backgrounds, and eras of origin. Similarities include the utilitarian concepts of nature used, the functions or services considered, and the ongoing challenge of valuing and monetizing them. However, there are also fundamental differences in regard to property rights and assumptions on the harmony of forest functions, respectively apparent and potential trade-offs between different ecosystem services for which the current discourse promotes market-based governance approaches as the mean of choice to balance competing interests of stakeholders. In terms of current policy debates as on REDDplus, the focus on one particular ecosystem servicehere the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissionsshows significant analogies to the historic forest functions discourse in which timber production was seen as the main function that inherently ensures the delivery of all other functions. With regard to the considerable risks resulting for biodiversity and other ecosystem services from such a mono-functional focus we argue that any market-based approach to REDDplus should be accompanied by comprehensive international and national regulatory policies and foster the implementation of effective safeguards.

We construct a regulation model in which renegotiation occurs due to the imperfect enforcement of concession contracts. This enables us to provide theoretical predictions for the impact, on the probability of renegotiation of a concession, of regulatory policy, institutional features, economic shocks and of several characteristics of the concession contracts themselves.

The efficient operation and expansion of infrastructures in developing countries is crucial for growth and poverty reduction. However, recent reforms aimed at improving the performance of these sectors have had limited success. Evidence suggests that, in many instances, this was because the traditional regulatory theory relied on by policymakers was not suitable for the institutional context in developing countries. This article surveys more recent theoretical work focusing on problems with regulation in these countries. At the heart of the survey is the work of Jean-Jacques Laffont, who, in the last decade of his life, set about developing a theoretical framework for regulation in developing countries. We consider the implications of his work, which focused on the key institutional limitations faced in developing countries. We then discuss where experience suggests that there are important omissions from this modeling, bringing in extensions and alternative approaches pursued by ot...

Развитие евразийской интеграции все чаще становится предметом различных оценок и дискуссий, что делает актуальным анализ данного феномена, влияющих на него факторов, а также, собственно, более глубокую дискуссию о том, нужна ли конкуренция юрисдикций для международной (региональной) экономической интеграции или нет.

Benefit-cost analysis can play a very important role in legislative and regulatory policy debates on improving the environment, health, and safety. It can help illustrate the tradeoffs that are inherent in public policymaking as well as make those tradeoffs more transparent. It can also help agencies set regulatory priorities. Benefit-cost analysis should be used to help decisionmakers reach a decision. Contrary to the views of some, benefit-cost analysis is neither necessary nor sufficient for designing sensible public policy. If properly done, it can be very helpful to agencies in the decisionmaking process. Decisionmakers should not be precluded from considering the economic benefits and costs of different policies in the development of regulations. Laws that prohibit costs or other factors from being considered in administrative decisionmaking are inimical to good public policy. Currently, several of the most important regulatory statutes have been interpreted to imply such proh...

Access to financial services, or rather the lack thereof, is often indiscriminately decried as problem in many developing countries. This paper argues that the "problem of access" should rather be analyzed by identifying different demand and supply constraints. We use the concept of an access possibilities frontier, drawn for a given set of state variables, to distinguish between cases where a financial system settles below the constrained optimum, cases where this constrained optimum is too low, and-in credit services-cases where the observed outcome is excessively high. We distinguish between payment and savings services and fixed intermediation costs, on the one hand, and lending services and different sources of credit risk, on the other hand. We include both supply and demand side frictions that can lead to lower access. The analysis helps identify bankable and banked population, the binding constraint to close the gap between the two, and policies to prudently expand the bankable population. This new conceptual framework can inform the debate on adequate policies to expand access to financial services and can serve as basis for an informed measurement of access.

Critical information infrastructure protection is the subject "du jour." An important part to addressing the issue is to answer the question whether the private sector or the government should be responsible for protection. The choice of governing arrangement -government provision, private provision or any combination thereof -is essential to ensuring an adequate level of security. This paper discusses how the market for critical information infrastructure protection may be susceptible to various market failures, namely public goods, externalities and information deficits. The presence of these market failures suggests that government intervention in the market is necessary. While this paper does not present a specific regulatory model or a set of regulatory tools to address these market failures, it asserts that understanding the market failures inherent in critical information infrastructure protection is a key element to designing a successful regulatory policy. Failure to understand and acknowledge the reasons for the inability of the private sector to provide adequate protection can impact a nation-state's security and render it vulnerable to attack.

An average of 500,000 tons of obsolete Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipments (WEEE) are dumped into Nigeria monthly with its associated health and environmental hazards. E-waste includes computers, entertainment electronics, mobile phones and other items that have been discarded by their original users. While there is no generally accepted definition of e-waste, in most cases e-waste consists of expensive and more or less durable products used for data processing, telecommunications or entertainment in private households and businesses.

În ultimii doi ani, principalul subiect de discuţii a fost "criza economică mondială"; de ce?, cu ce efect?; sau când şi cum o să o depăşim?, sunt întrebări pe care fiecare om şi le-a pus cel puţin o dată în aceste ultime douăzeci şi patru de luni. S-a discutat şi se discută în continuare zilnic, pe cel puţin un post de televiziune pe această temă. Faptul că acest fenomen a generat şi continuă să genereze subiecte de interes atât pentru talck-show-ri cât şi pentru comunitatea academică, ne-a făcut să reflectăm asupra unei idei: "Dacă acest fenomen este sursa atâtor polemici, înseamnă că informaţia deţinută de fiecare este incompletă într-un grad mai mic sau mai mare. Această informaţie incompletă este caracteristică a hazardului moral; şi oare nu aceasta este cauza realităţii economice actuale, sau este doar o externalitate a acesteia?". Acest articol reprezintă un studiu din punct de vedere al hazardului moral asupra crizei economice. Pilonul principal al acestui studiu îl constituie întrebarea: "Este hazardul moral cauză sau externalitate a situaţiei economice actuale?" Drept urmare, sunt urmărite şi analizate formele hazardului moral înainte şi după august 2008 (momentul declanşării crizei). Cuvinte cheie: criza economică, sistem financiar, hazard moral, informaţii economice şi financiare, politici reglementare;

The rapid and widespread emergence of an anti-plastic shopping bag norm and associated regulatory policies around the world in recent years forces a rethinking of current understandings of norm dynamics and policy implementation. The patterns of this movement are explored and characterised as a South to North, non-networked and multi-scalar series of events that together represent a globally significant emergence

Recent research has emphasized the role of regulatory measures in the adoption of new technologies, specifically mobile telephony. This study describes in detail the three phases of cellular licensing in Israel. It surveys policy changes and questions their contribution to the public interest, while discussing their underlying objectives. It reveals a pattern by which Israeli regulatory policy has shifted from a public interest focus to a government interest/corporate interest focus. r