Category: Law
Markets in everything
Stab vests for the World Cup in South Africa.
From the authorities:
The national police says the company [selling the vests] was causing "unnecessary fear".
South Africa's football boss Kirsten Nematandani has assured visitors that all safety measures were in place.
South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of violent crime. The full story is here and I thank Stan Tsirulnikov and Wes Winham for the pointer.
How to help Haiti
…contact the White House and tell them that you support granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS) immediately.
TPS is a form of temporary humanitarian immigration relief given to nationals of countries that have suffered severe disasters, natural or man-made. (For example, El Salvador got TPS was after the country was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2001, Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and Burundi, Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia were designated because of ongoing armed conflicts.)
Once a country has been given TPS, its nationals who are in the United States can apply for work authorization (a very useful thing to have if, say, one needs to send money home to family members in need of medical care or a house that has not been reduced to rubble), can't be deported or put into immigration detention (also quite handy if you're trying to work and send money home), and can apply for travel authorization, which allows them to visit their home country and return to the US, even if they wouldn't otherwise have a visa that would allow them back into the country (incredibly important if you have loved ones who have been badly hurt and need to visit them, or if you need to go home to attend funerals).
Designating Haiti for TPS status would provide an immediate, tremendously valuable benefit to Haitian immigrants in the United States. But, more importantly it would benefit their loved ones who remain in Haiti and are in desperate need of their assistance.
That's Amanda Taub. Chris Blattman agrees. Here is a relevant Michael Clemens talk. Another idea is cancel Haiti's debt.
The health care excise tax compromise
Megan McArdle reports:
And so it looks like they may have reached a deal sooner than otherwise expected: unions get a special two-year exclusion from the tax.
Presumably, the unions plan to go back and get their exclusion extended every few years.
Here is more detail. I suppose that would increase the rate of unionization…and increase union support for Democratic candidates, a win-win, no?
Zakaria on Incentive Design
As for the calls to treat the would-be bomber as an enemy combatant, torture him and toss him into Guantanamo, God knows he deserves it. But keep in mind that the crucial intelligence we received was from the boy's father. If that father had believed that the United States was a rogue superpower that would torture and abuse his child without any sense of decency, would he have turned him in? To keep this country safe, we need many more fathers, uncles, friends and colleagues to have enough trust in America that they, too, would turn in the terrorist next door.
From an excellent op-ed by Fareed Zakaria. Hat tip to Jeff Miron.
The theory of optimal fines
A Swiss court has slapped a wealthy speeder with a chalet-sized fine – a full $290,000.
Judges at the cantonal court in St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, based the record-breaking fine on the speeder's estimated wealth of over $20 million.
A statement on the court's Web site says the driver – a repeat offender – drove up to 35 miles an hour (57 kilometers an hour) faster than the 50-mile-an-hour (80-kilometer-an-hour) limit.
Here is the full article and I thank Daniel Lippman for the pointer.
My Law and Literature reading list, Spring 2010
The semester is underway!
The New English Bible, Oxford Study Edition.
In the Belly of the Beast, by Jack Henry Abbott.
Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, by Fernando Verrissimo.
Glaspell’s Trifles, available on-line.
Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Novels and Stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, volume 1.
I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.
Moby Dick, by Hermann Melville, excerpts, chapters 89 and 90, available on-line.
Year’s Best SF 9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis.
Kathryn Davis, The Walking Tour.
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir.
Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.
Timothy J. Gilfoyle, A Pickpocket’s Tale.
Henning Mankell, Sidetracked.
Edgar Allen Poe, The Gold-Bug, available on-line.
Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome.
We also will view a small number of movies.
Peter Leeson update
He is now the North American editor of Public Choice, replacing Michael Munger and of course we all congratulate him. I have a modest proposal for how he should referee submitted papers, let's see if he uses it.
French sales start today, by law
Trading laws stipulate that there are two periods for sales in France. Winter sales from January to February and summer sales from June to July. In each case, the sales last for five weeks. All goods on sale must have been in the shop for a minimum of thirty days prior to the sale date – nu buying in cheap stock and selling it as a sale item. Reuctions must ne visibly displayed in percentage terms. labels must also show the old pre sale price and the new sale price. Retaiers are allowed to reduce their prices three times in the sales – after the first fortnight, and again in the final week.
Outside the official sale periods, retailers are allowed two weeks in the year, to use at their discretion, for extra sales such as pre-christmas sales or spring sales.
…Tomorrow morning [today] many shops (with permission from their local trading authorities) will be opening at 7am. Needless to say that the starting date is a national one decreed by the government.
Here is more information and I thank Bill Hawshaw for the pointer.
Daron Acemoglu on the U.S.-Mexican border
Via Arnold Kling, Acemoglu writes:
On one side of the border fence, in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, the median household income is $30,000. A few feet away, it's $10,000….The key difference is that those on the north side of the border enjoy law and order and dependable government services — they can go about their daily activities and jobs without fear for their life or safety or property rights. On the other side, the inhabitants have institutions that perpetuate crime, graft, and insecurity.
With apologies to Douglass North, I am rarely happy with this kind of explanation. First, are the bad institutions cause or effect? Most likely we need a framework which allows them to be both.
Second, I want the theory to also explain the (quite large) difference between the truly poor Chiapas and the relatively wealthy northern Mexico. By many metrics northern Mexico is more corrupt than Chiapas (there is more to be corrupt over, for one thing, plus drug routes play a role) and it very likely has higher rates of violent crime. In general I prefer theories which explain three data points to theories which explain two. Chiapas, of course, isn't some weird outlier which I pulled out of a hat; it's in the same country as northern Mexico and many people from that region have populated both northern Mexico and Arizona for that matter. I could have picked many other parts of Mexico as well.
One factor is positive selection into northern Mexico, on grounds of ambition and desire for higher wages. Another factor is that northern Mexican norms are (partially) geared to support American multinationals and these norms have spread more generally, including to Mexican enterprises in the region.
On another point, as I get older, I tend to view "family structure which encourages an obsession with education" as an increasingly important variable for explaining levels in per capita income, if not always growth rates in the immediate moment. It's not a truly independent variable — when it comes to growth what is? — but it's one good place to start. It helps explain why the Soviet Union, after decades of state fascism/communism, slid into a living standard higher than that of much of Latin America. It explains quite a bit of Arizona vs. Mexico but less of northern Mexico vs. Chiapas. Acemoglu mentions education in his article, but he seems to view it as resulting from instiutions rather than causing them.
I don't buy into the genetic explanations but still I view "family structure which encourages an obsession with education" as very hard to replicate through policy. Emmanuel Todd's The Causes of Progress has many problems, but it is an under-mined book when it comes to the causes of both liberty and economic growth.
Terrorists and false positives
Matt Yglesias calculates:
…monitoring the UK’s 1.5 million Muslims is a lost cause. If you have a 99.9 percent accurate method of telling whether or not a given British Muslim is a dangerous terrorist, then apply it to all 1.5 million British Muslims, you’re going to find 1,500 dangerous terrorists in the UK. But nobody thinks there are anything like 1,500 dangerous terrorists in the UK. I’d be very surprised if there were as many as 15. And if there are 15, that means you’re 99.9 percent accurate method is going to get you a suspect pool that’s overwhelmingly composed of innocent people. The weakness of al-Qaeda’s movement, and the very tiny pool of operatives it can draw from, makes it essentially impossible to come up with viable methods for identifying those operatives.
Public Domain Day
Today is Public Domain day and James Boyle reports:
In Ray Bradbury’s 1953 classic, Fahrenheit 451, a “fireman” is a man who burns books “for the good of humanity.” Written at the height of the Cold War, the book paints a shockingly dystopian picture of a culture at war with its own printed record, one deeply infused by Bradbury’s love of books. When the book was written, Bradbury got a copyright term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years if he or his publisher wished. Most authors and publishers did not bother to renew – very few have a commercial life longer than a few years. That meant that about 93% of books and 85% of all works from 1953 passed into the public domain within 28 years. But Bradbury’s book was a commercial success. The copyright was renewed and as a result it would have been entering the public domain tomorrow – January 1, 2010 – Public Domain Day.
You could reprint it, make a low cost educational version, legally create a braille or audio book edition, even base a new film or play on it. All without asking permission or paying a fee. But copyright law has changed since then. Copyright terms have been twice retrospectively extended. Now, Fahrenheit 451 is not slated to enter the public domain until 2049.
Regulatory solutions from Emanuel Derman
I had a fantasy in which the Fed and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) switched roles.
If a bank failed at 9 a.m. one morning and shut its doors, the TSA would announce that all banks henceforth begin their business day at 10 a.m.
And, if a terrorist managed to get on board a plane between Stockholm and Washington, the Fed would increase the number of flights between the cities.
The piece is here and the pointer is from Felix Salmon.
Markets in everything China fact of the day
Wanted: One live-in protester, $146 a month, no days off.
When the managers of a Beijing restaurant marked for demolition were too busy to fight it, they posted an Internet ad and hired a stranger to stay there around the clock. The job seems to be a first for China, where frenzied urban construction has led to violent evictions, protests and even suicide.
Huddled on a makeshift bed in the trash-strewn, freezing restaurant, Lu Daren said he once worked for a demolition crew and understands their tactics.
"I'm tired," the 46-year-old said Thursday, after a long night of fending off the latest visit from what he suspects were hired thugs by the landlord. "Tired, tired, tired." He stays – wrapped in blankets, reading the newspaper or writing idle poetry, occasionally taking short walks_ because he thinks the restaurateurs have been treated unfairly.
The full story is here and I thank Daniel Lippman for the pointer.
Christmas Bonuses for Fannie and Freddie
The Obama administration tried to sneak this one under the radar by making it official on Christmas Eve. The Washington Post did a good job catching the story:
The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress.
…But even as the administration was making this open-ended financial commitment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009.
The compensation packages, including up to $6 million each to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's chief executives, come amid an ongoing public debate about lavish payments to executives at banks and other financial firms that have received taxpayer aid. But while many firms on Wall Street have repaid the assistance, there is no prospect that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will do so.
No Give, No Take in Israel
In January, Israel will become the first country in the world to give people who sign their organ donor cards points pushing them up the transplant list should they one day need a transplant. Points will also be given to transplant candidates whose first-degree relatives have signed their organ donor cars or whose first-degree relatives were organ donors.
In the case of kidneys, for example, two points (on a 0-18 point scale) will be given if the candidate had three or more years previous to being listed signed their organ card. One point will be given if a first-degree relative had signed and 3.5 points if a first-degree relative had previously donated.
In Entrepreneurial Economics I argued for a point allocation system like this–which I called a "no give, no take" system–as a way to increase the incentive to sign one's organ donor card. One advantage of a no-give, no take system over paying for organs is that most people find this type of system to be fair and just–those who are willing to give are the first to receive should they one day be in in need.
The new policy will be widely advertised in Israel and will be transitioned into place beginning in January. I think this new policy is very important. If organ donation rates increase in Israel, I expect that other countries will quickly follow suit.
By the way, is it peculiar that the two countries in the world with the best organ donor systems are now Israel and Iran?
Hat tip to Dave Undis whose Lifesharers group (I am an advisor) is working on implementing a similar system in the United States.