1,720,996 research outputs found
An Economic Analysis of Property Rights in Information: Justifications and Problems of Exclusive Rights, Incentives to Generate Information, and the Alternative of a Government-Run Reward System
Full text linkThis article examines and questions the traditional justifications for intellectual property (I.P.) rights in America (focusing on copyright and patent law), and explores incentives necessary to induce the creation of these works of information. I conclude that changes are needed to I.P. law in order to best foster society\u27s dual goals of 1) promoting incentives to create I.P. works (such as currently patented drugs), while also 2) maximizing distribution of those products to all consumers who would stand to gain (and not merely those who can afford the monopoly price charged). Hence, I suggest the creation of a Government-Run Reward System to best serve both of society\u27s goals: incentives distribution. Under the reward system, innovators would be paid directly by the government for their intellectual property creations. In turn, their works would pass immediately into the public domain so that they are freely reproducible and distributable at their marginal cost of production (rather than the monopoly price which prevails under patent and copyright law today). In its ideal form, the reward system thereby allows for both socially optimal creation and distribution of intellectual property works, eliminating the deadweight social loss that plagues us today
Corralling Kevorkian: Regulating Physician-Assisted Suicide in America
Full text linkThis article examines the evolution and history of the development of the right-to-die in America, the ethical considerations surrounding physician-assisted suicide (P.A.S.), and the dangers posed by the rise of managed care. I then explore and analyze efforts to legalize and regulate assisted suicide (Netherlands, Oregon, The Model State Act), and suggest the criteria I believe are essential to include in any P.A.S. regulatory scheme
Responsible Regulation: A Sensible Cost-Benefit, Risk Versus Risk Approach to Federal Health and Safety Regulation
Full text linkFederal health and safety regulations have saved or improved the lives of thousands of Americans, but protecting our citizens from risk entails significant costs. In a world of limited resources, we must spend our regulatory dollars responsibly in order to do the most we can with the money we have. Given the infeasibility of creating a risk-free society, this paper argues that a sensible cost-benefit, risk versus risk approach be taken in the design of U.S. regulatory oversight policy. The goal should always be to further the best interests of the nation, rather than to satisfy the narrow agenda of powerful industry or political forces. This entails designing safety regulations efficiently to maximize society\u27s welfare, choosing the point where their marginal benefits equal their marginal costs - rather than simply asking whether total benefits exceed total costs in the aggregate. Federal regulatory oversight policy should also ask that proposed regulations compare the risks they reduce to the new risks they unintentionally create (substitution risks). Additionally, our citizens should be educated regarding systematic risk misperceptions, and regulatory agencies should make their risk assessments objectively. Moreover, most-likely scenarios must be addressed by responsible regulatory solutions, rather than the current practice of focusing on worst-case estimates. Finally, agencies should publish and justify their regulatory triggers and perform ex-post evaluations of their programs in an attempt to continuously improve the quality of regulatory design.
Efforts by the executive branch, from Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton, have attempted to inject similar common sense into the regulatory oversight process. Unfortunately, the Congressional mandates given to government agencies are often silent on the subject of cost-benefit analysis, and recent Supreme Court cases have held that regulatory agencies are not obligated to even consider the costs of their proposals. I will explore several legislative reform bills that are aimed at overriding Congressional mandates, but to date, none have been successful.
Finally, this paper will address certain common criticisms to which a marginal cost benefit, risk-risk approach to responsible regulatory reform would be subject. Most notably, the measurement of costs and benefits is not an exact science, and using willingness to pay as a marker of individual and social utility has its limitations. Regulatory reform also faces challenges on moral grounds, as scholars openly decry the explicit tradeoff between human lives and financial resources. While these criticisms contain merit, this paper concludes that to ignore a sensible cost-benefit analysis of federal safety regulations is to divert resources from their most beneficial uses and to settle for second best. In a world of scarcity, we must make regulatory tradeoffs as efficiently as possible in order to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and to save the most lives we can. It would be unethical to do anything less
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Congressional Testimony before House Committee on Energy & Commerce: The Benefits and Costs of Year-round Daylight Saving Time
No full textTestimony before Washington State Legislature on Bill 5795 Adopting Permanent Standard Time
No full textVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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