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Liability Design for Autonomous Vehicles and Human-Driven Vehicles: A Hierarchical Game-Theoretic Approach
Get PDFAutonomous vehicles (AVs) are inevitably entering our lives with potential benefits for improved traffic safety, mobility, and accessibility. However, AVs’ benefits also introduce a serious potential challenge, in the form of complex interactions with human-driven vehicles (HVs). The emergence of AVs introduces uncertainty in the behavior of human actors and in the impact of the AV manufacturer on autonomous driving design. This paper thus aims to investigate how AVs affect road safety and to design socially optimal liability rules in comparative negligence for AVs and human drivers. A unified game is developed, including a Nash game between human drivers, a Stackelberg game between the AV manufacturer and HVs, and a Stackelberg game between the law maker and other users. We also establish the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium of the game. The game is then simulated with numerical examples to investigate the emergence of human drivers’ moral hazard, the AV manufacturer’s role in traffic safety, and the law maker’s role in liability design. Our findings demonstrate that human drivers could develop moral hazard if they perceive their road environment has become safer and an optimal liability rule design is crucial to improve social welfare with advanced transportation technologies. More generally, the game-theoretic model developed in this paper provides an analytical tool to assist policy-makers in AV policymaking and hopefully mitigate uncertainty in the existing regulation landscape about AV technologies
How International Oil Companies Could Assist Greece to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: A Conversation Starter
Get PDFThis policy paper wishes to be a timely contribution towards a fruitful debate among stakeholders; it urges International Oil Companies (IOCs) to examine how the critical Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Greece can be integrated into their core business so that the oil and gas industry can contribute to the country’s sustainable growth
Inconsistency\u27s Many Forms in Investor-State Dispute Settlement and Implications for Reform
Get PDFAttracting investment in agriculture has been a key policy goal of governments in the global south. Development partners have supported these policies. But what do governments hope to achieve by attracting investment in the agricultural sector? Why are companies interested in investing? What is in it for local communities? And what is the role of lawyers? This primer provides an introduction to some of the key issues that arise in the negotiation of contracts linked to investments in agriculture, and practical guidance for how to approach common issues. Section 1 of this primer outlines the typical goals of three important stakeholders – the government, companies, and communities who live on or near land on which a project will take place – along with the risks that each type of stakeholder faces. Section 2 discusses the role of contracts and lawyers, provides tips for negotiations, and includes resources for further reading
Innovative Financing Solutions for Community Support in the Context of Land Investments
Get PDFCommunities affected by agricultural, forestry, and other resource investments urgently need increased funding for legal and technical support. Without support, communities risk losing access to critical land and resources, suffering human rights violations, or missing opportunities to benefit from investments. A lack of community support can also lead to conflict and challenges that are damaging for companies and host governments.
Donors and support providers have found ways to finance support for communities, but such efforts can only extend so far. Promising new opportunities exist for filling the financing gap, yet they will require sustained efforts by a range of actors. This report presents a call to action to help communities secure the support they so crucially need.
The report explores options for tapping new funding sources for community support. These include: Government marshaling of funding from companies and others, through taxes, fees, and penalties Basket funds, operated by independent, trusted entities and funded by contributions from multiple actors Market-based impact investments and social impact bonds Direct company funding Third party funding Other solutions for increasing funding or reducing costs, including crowdfunding, generating profits from social enterprises, affordable user fees or in-kind services, contingency and uplift fees, and court-ordered fee shifting.
The report also presents overarching considerations for developing a new financing initiative. These include: the initiative’s likely cost, efficiency and financial sustainability, political complexity and obstacles, political economy implications, the importance of strong governance mechanisms, and the logistics required to link funding, communities and support providers
Twin Crises in the WTO, and No Obvious Way Out
Get PDFPause for a moment. Assume that, by magic wand, the Trump Administration changes its attitude, and agrees to new appointments to the Appellate Body (AB). Have the WTO problems disappeared simply because a complete AB is now in place? Even if matters such as Rule 15 are addressed,1 the distinction between facts and law is clarified and a resolution is found to concerns regarding the AB overstepping of its mandate, we are left with the fact that new trade agreements are being routinely negotiated outside the confines of the WTO, leading enforcement to migrate elsewhere. Is the AB crisis simply a case of missing judges or should it be viewed as symptom of a wider crisis hitting multilateralism, even if the causes for the latter are distinct?
We argue against the commonly held view that the AB crisis would ipso facto be over, if the United States (US) were to change its mind, and move to complete the AB membership. This view ignores both the perceptions of many insiders that the operation of the dispute settlement system needs to be improved, as well as, crucially, the broader challenges confronting cooperation in the WTO. The increasing shift to bilateral, regional and plurilateral forms of cooperation will have an impact on WTO dispute settlement even if the AB were to be reconstituted. The WTO has not managed to add much to its legislative arsenal since its creation. Besides a few sector-specific agreements in the realm on goods and services negotiated in the late 1990s, the only comprehensive agreement it managed to conclude since 1995 is the Agreement on Trade Facilitation. The legislative function of the multilateral trading system is … well, in crisis
Advancing Racial Justice and Human Rights: Rights-Based Strategies for the Current Era
Get PDFOn June 1, 2018, the Human Rights Institute convened its 15th annual CLE Symposium on Human Rights in the United States, a signature event of the Human Rights Institute’s Bringing Human Rights Lawyers’ Network. The day-long event brought together more than 150 leading U.S. lawyers, activists, and academics, along with federal and local government representatives to share strategies to advance racial justice within a domestic and global context increasingly hostile to human rights.
This report highlights key takeaways and themes from the Symposium, drawing from speakers’ remarks and their advocacy. It also serves as a basic human rights primer, describing core human rights principles relevant to advancing racial justice, and sharing examples of the use of human rights standards and strategies to advance domestic social justice
The Sources of Immunity Law – Between International and Domestic Law
Get PDFThe immunities regimes covered by this volume presuppose the existence of juridically equal States whose interactions are governed by international law. States engage in international relations with each other through a variety of agents, who could be individuals or legal persons; and States likewise establish international organizations for carrying out shared purposes. Each State has a domestic legal system through which State actors generate various sorts of executive, judicial and legislative practice, all of which can in principle be evidence of the international law of immunities.
The several regimes relevant to the immunities of the State itself, and of international organisations created by States, and of individuals acting under the authority of the State or of international organisations, are governed by multiple different bodies of international law, all of which are amenable in principle to analysis in terms of the classic enumeration of sources in Article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), namely (a) international conventions, (b) customary international law, (c) general principles of law and (d) judicial decisions and the teachings of publicists as subsidiary means for determination of rules of law. The sections that follow will take up these diverse sources, beginning with the sources of law applicable to the jurisdictional immunities of the State itself (Section II) and international organisations created by States (Section III), then turning to immunities of individuals acting under the authority of, or in relation to, States and international organizations (Section IV), and concluding with discussion of a series of recent and pending cases in which international and national tribunals have considered the same issues of immunity, while not always agreeing on how to do so (Section V). These pairs of international and national cases illustrate the image suggested by the title of this chapter – that the sources of immunity law lie ‘between’ or at the connecting points of international and domestic law
Greening the WTO: EGA, Tariff Concessions and Policy Likeness
Get PDFThis paper considers the APEC and EGA agreements which grant tariff concession through HS classifications beyond the six digit level ( ex outs ) in favour of green goods and discuss how these initiatives fit into the WTO legal regime. Even if the practical significance of the APEC agreement should not be overestimated as it involves modest tariff concessions over a subset of goods which are not heavily traded, these agreements involve a paradigm shift to the extent that they use tariffs concessions negotiated on a plurilateral basis as a policy instrument to meet public policy concern, instead of making market access conditional on meeting national regulations. We find that there is a tension between the current definition of likeness for the enforcement of MFN provisions and the use of ex outs and a risk that improved market access for ex outs could be seen a de facto discrimination. One way out of this conundrum is to define likeness in terms of policy rationales
The New Stock Market: Law, Economics, and Policy
No full textThe U.S. stock market has been transformed over the last twenty-five years. Once a market in which human beings traded at human speeds, it is now an electronic market pervaded by algorithmic trading, conducted at speeds nearing that of light. High-frequency traders participate in a large portion of all transactions, and a significant minority of all trade occurs on alternative trading systems known as “dark pools.” These developments have been widely criticized, but there is no consensus on the best regulatory response to these dramatic changes./= / \u3e/= / \u3eThe New Stock Market offers a comprehensive new look at how these markets work, how they fail, and how they should be regulated. Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, and Gabriel V. Rauterberg describe stock markets’ institutions and regulatory architecture. They draw on the informational paradigm of microstructure economics to highlight the crucial role of information asymmetries and adverse selection in explaining market behavior, while examining a wide variety of developments in market practices and participants. The result is a compelling account of the stock market’s regulatory framework, fundamental institutions, and economic dynamics, combined with an assessment of its various controversies. The New Stock Market covers a wide range of issues including the practices of high-frequency traders, insider trading, manipulation, short selling, broker-dealer practices, and trading venue fees and rebates. The book illuminates both the existing regulatory structure of our equity trading markets and how we can improve it.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1002/thumbnail.jp
Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition
No full textKatherine Franke makes a powerful case for reparations for Black Americans by amplifying the stories of formerly enslaved people and calling for repair of the damage caused by the legacy of American slavery. Repair invites readers to explore the historical context for reparations, offering a detailed account of the circumstances that surrounded the emancipation of enslaved Black people in two unique contexts, the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Davis Bend, Mississippi, Jefferson Davis’s former plantation. Through these two critical historical examples, Franke unpacks intergenerational, systemic racism and white privilege at the heart of American society and argues that reparations for slavery are necessary, overdue and possible.https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1010/thumbnail.jp