Regulatory Alternatives Research Articles

Use of multi-criteria decision analysis in regulatory alternatives analysis: A case study of lead free solder

Regulators are implementing new programs that require manufacturers of products containing certain chemicals of concern to identify, evaluate, and adopt viable, safer alternatives. Such programs raise the difficult question for policymakers and regulated businesses of which alternatives are "viable" and "safer." To address that question, these programs use "alternatives analysis," an emerging methodology that integrates issues of human health and environmental effects with technical feasibility and economic impact. Despite the central role that alternatives analysis plays in these programs, the methodology itself is neither well-developed nor tailored to application in regulatory settings. This study uses the case of Pb-based bar solder and its non-Pb-based alternatives to examine the application of 2 multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods to alternatives analysis: multi-attribute utility analysis and outranking. The article develops and evaluates an alternatives analysis methodology and supporting decision-analysis software for use in a regulatory context, using weighting of the relevant decision criteria generated from a stakeholder elicitation process. The analysis produced complete rankings of the alternatives, including identification of the relative contribution to the ranking of each of the highest level decision criteria such as human health impacts, technical feasibility, and economic feasibility. It also examined the effect of variation in data conventions, weighting, and decision frameworks on the outcome. The results indicate that MCDA can play a critical role in emerging prevention-based regulatory programs. Multi-criteria decision analysis methods offer a means for transparent, objective, and rigorous analysis of products and processes, providing regulators and stakeholders with a common baseline understanding of the relative performance of alternatives and the trade-offs they present.

Priority-based classification of spectrum access models [Accepted From Open Call

The reforms in spectrum management aim toward more efficient, flexible, and shared use of spectrum, while fostering innovation and competition in mobile communications. The goal is to have affordable wireless broadband and make Internet access a human right. To achieve this goal, the regulators need to identify, evaluate, and decide between the different spectrum access models. This article presents a taxonomy of the models, which is based on priorities between the different users of spectrum. For example, the low priority systems may be allowed to use the spectrum only if the high priority systems are not occupying the frequency. The hierarchy of the systems can be implemented using different technologies such as centralized databases or distributed sensing devices. The taxonomy clarifies the regulatory alternatives and emphasizes the differences in ownership and usage rights. The new models can be incorporated in the auction design in order to estimate their value to the companies, and this reflects the recent trend of supporting spectrum management with market- based methods.

Revitalisation of Common Use in Management of Modern Multifunctional Landscapes

Land areas in collective ownership or use are traditionally referred to as commons. Through history, the common use and ownership has been a widespread means of regulating the use of natural resources. Changing economic conditions and technology spawned a process however where land use rights and landowner rights aggregated into the modern form of private ownership of individual farms with full management and owner rights. This process had obvious rationales in terms of production of marketable agricultural products. However, in the twentieth century increasing awareness of the supply of externalities such as clean groundwater and recreational opportunities from landscapes turned the attention once again to commons as an instrument for managing natural resources. Using groundwater and coastal landscapes as case examples, we pinpoint problems where outputs from the landscape are multiple consisting of a mix of public and private goods. In some instances central intervention is needed to ensure provision of public goods. In situations where transaction costs are too high to justify the guaranteed supply of goods, local initiatives, cooperatives and networks may be suitable regulatory alternatives to the predominant private and individualised ownership. It is concluded that the management regimes chosen should reflect the dominant functionality of the area in question.

Delivering Competition Damages in the UK

This paper examines the system for delivering compensation for breach of competition law that would apply to claims if the proposals contained in 2012 consultation by the U.K. government came into effect. It examines how the system would operate in practice, and how an individual or collective claim would be dealt with. The position involves incorporating various innovative techniques from the three pillars of public enforcement, and private enforcement and ADR, each of which individually constitutes a significant reform, into a sophisticated pre-existing system. The result is complex and untested, not least because the details of every one of the major individual techniques are yet to be defined. The paper examines crucial influence that the incentives and powers (carrots, nudges and sticks) that would apply in each situation would have on how a claim is processed, or which impede it. It finds that the ADR and regulatory techniques can offer transformative solutions in delivering compensation. Whilst a private class action could operate in follow-on mass cases, it would be unnecessarily slow and costly compared with intelligent use of the ADR and regulatory alternatives. Significant concerns are identified over whether a class action would be effective in stand-alone or mass consumer cases. Accordingly, it suggests that policymakers should re-examine priorities as between private enforcement and other options.

Estimating the economic value of British Columbia's domestic cannabis market: Implications for provincial cannabis policy

BackgroundBritish Columbia (BC), Canada, is home to a large illegal cannabis industry that is known to contribute to substantial organized crime concerns. Although debates have emerged regarding the potential benefits of a legally regulated market to address a range of drug policy-related social problems, the value of the local (i.e., domestically consumed) cannabis market has not been characterized. MethodsMonte Carlo simulation methods were used to generate a median value and 95% credibility interval for retail expenditure estimates of the domestic cannabis market in BC. Model parameter estimates were obtained for the number of cannabis users, the frequency of cannabis use, the quantity of cannabis used, and the price of cannabis from government surveillance data and studies of BC cannabis users. ResultsThe median annual estimated retail expenditure on cannabis by British Columbians was $407million (95% Credibility Interval [CI]: $169–948million). Daily users accounted for the bulk of the cannabis revenue, with a median estimated expenditure of approximately $357 million (95% CI: $149–845million), followed by weekly users ($44million, 95% CI: $18–90million), and monthly users ($6million, 95% CI: $3–12million). When under-reporting of cannabis use was adjusted for, the estimated retail expenditure ranged from $443 million (95% CI: $185–1billion) to $564 million (95% CI: $236–1.3billion). ConclusionBased on local consumption patterns, conservative estimates suggest that BC's domestic illegal cannabis trade is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Given the value of this market and the failure and harms of law enforcement efforts to control the cannabis market, policymakers should consider regulatory alternatives.

The dangerous charms of the unknown

The dangerous charms of the unknown

Decision Theory and the Case for a Disclosure-Based Insider Trading Regime

Stock trading on the basis of material, nonpublic information (insider trading) is a “mixed bag” in that it can create both social harms and social benefits. Attempts to regulate such mixed bag business practices may err in two directions: They may wrongly permit or encourage socially undesirable instances of the practice at issue, or they may wrongly condemn or deter socially desirable instances. In either case, social welfare suffers (i.e., “error costs” result). Attempts to avoid error in one direction or another by heightening the liability inquiry will tend to increase the administrative costs (“decision costs”) of the regulatory regime. Decision theory therefore calls for regulating mixed bag practices under a regime that “minimizes the sum of error and decision costs.” Adjudged under the decision-theoretic criterion, the current regime for regulating insider trading in the United States fails; it is difficult to administer, and it deters many instances of socially desirable informed trading. The approach apparently favored by the enforcement agencies fares even worse. The laissez-faire, “contractarian” approach favored by many law and economics scholars would represent an improvement over both the legal status quo and the approach favored by the enforcement agencies, but that approach, too, may be suboptimal.This paper advocates an optional, disclosure-based regulatory regime. Under the regime, authorized informed trading would be permitted as long as the trader first disclosed to a centralized, searchable database her insider status, the fact that she was trading on the basis of material, nonpublic in-formation, and the nature of her trade. Such an approach would (1) enhance the market efficiency benefits of insider trading by facilitating “trade decoding,” while (2) reducing potential costs stemming from deliberate mismanagement, disclosure delays, and infringement of informational property rights. By “accentuating the positive” and “eliminating the negative” consequences of informed trading, the proposed approach would perform better than the legal status quo and the leading proposed regulatory alternatives at minimizing the sum of error and decision costs resulting from insider trading restrictions.

Collective Regulation of Wages and Conditions in Aged Care: Beyond Labour Law

This article considers the collective regulation of wages and conditions in the highly feminized residential aged care workforce. It argues that the traditional regulation of wages and conditions through industrial instruments such as awards and collective bargaining agreements has failed to produce adequate or sustainable outcomes. Continuing low pay is exacerbating labour supply issues in a sector set to experience exponential growth in the coming decades. The ability of traditional labour law to deliver optimal outcomes for aged care workers is limited not only by low levels of collective representation, but also by funding constraints within the sector. This article explores regulatory alternatives and suggests that the integration of labour standards and outcomes into the existing accreditation standards and funding mechanisms for residential aged care warrants policymakers’ attention.

The Recasting of Copyright & Related Rights for the Knowledge Economy

Study carried out by the Institute for Information Law for the European Commission (DG Internal Market). Chapters 1 and 2 describe and examine the existing 'acquis communautaire' in the field of copyright and related (neighbouring) rights, with special focus on inconsistencies and unclarities. Chapters 3-6 deal with distinct issues that were identified a priori by the European Commission as meriting special attention: possible extension of the term of protection of phonograms (Chapter 3), possible alignment of the term of protection of co-written musical works (Chapter 4), the problems connected to multiple copyright ownership, including the issue of 'orphan works' (Chapter 5), and copyright awareness among consumers (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 provides an overall assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of the fifteen years of harmonisation of copyright and related rights in the EU and dwells on regulatory alternatives.

Topography of Lobbying Regulation

The aim of this article is to underline a more broad and complex approach towards the regulation of lobbying. Our objective here is to provide a systematic enumeration of possible regulatory alternatives. This research involves the examination of the most notable and significant cases of lobbying regulation in the western world and is based largely on the textual analysis of relevant regulatory documents. We do not, however, intend to present the detailed mapping of lobbying regulation in all possible arenas, or evaluate these means, or even recommend particular regulatory options or instruments. We therefore suggest an analytical framework highlighting three important points that should be clarified in each regulatory system: 1) the actors involved in lobbying, 2) the form of regulation, and 3) the regulatory means and instruments. The proposed topography of lobbying regulation can serve as a general basis for the further analysis of regulatory schemes and their comparison, but also as a guide for those considering regulatory options.

Beware the Rush to Presumption, Part A: Material Omissions in Regulatory Analyses for the Affordable Care Act's Interim Final Rules

Federal agencies issued eight major interim final regulations in 2010 to quickly implement major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. This paper finds that the regulatory impact analyses for these regulations were seriously incomplete, often omitting significant benefits, costs, or regulatory alternatives. Analysis of equity was cursory at best.

Self‐Regulation and the Obesity Epidemic

The obesity epidemic has provoked considerable concern along with suggestions and demands for corrective measures. After surveying the basic features of the epidemic, we turn our attention to self‐regulation, which is at the heart of most of the proposed solutions to the epidemic. Information, incentives, and most other tactics to get people to eat less and exercise more all rely on self‐regulatory processes. More attention should be paid to the distinction between interventions that depend on individual self‐regulation and interventions that bypass self‐regulation. A detailed examination of self‐regulatory and legislative regulatory alternatives, along with a detailed examination of the causes of the epidemic, leads to the conclusion that we should adopt a cautious and even skeptical approach to intervention. We scrutinize some of the principal proposed solutions to the obesity problem, few if any of which inspire optimism. The severity of the problem does not justify implementing unproven interventions in the absence of reliable evidence of their effectiveness.

Development of Norms Through Compliance Disclosure

This article introduces compliance disclosure regimes to business ethics research. Compliance disclosure is a relatively recent regulatory technique whereby companies are obliged to disclose the extent to which they comply with codes, ‘best practice standards’ or other extra-legal texts containing norms or prospective norms. Such ‘compliance disclosure’ obligations are often presented as flexible regulatory alternatives to substantive, command-and-control regulation. However, based on a report on experiences of existing compliance disclosure obligations, this article will identify major weaknesses that prevent them from becoming effective mechanisms to discipline a certain type of behaviour. It will be argued that regulatory recourse to compliance disclosure obligations is nonetheless worthwhile if we view them as mechanisms that can initiate a dialogue about norm interpretation, application and norm desirability. From this perspective, compliance disclosure obligations serve less to discipline companies by making corporate practices transparent, and more to trigger a process of norm development, in which the law, companies and their stakeholders interact. This article provides an illustration of how mandatory disclosure, if it is restricted to a unilateral communication process, may produce no effective results (or even prove counterproductive), whilst highlighting the alternative potential of disclosure as an initiator of dialogue, supported by laws, geared towards the development and refinement of norms applicable to business in a global context and the values they promote.

Electricity Tariff Regulation in Thailand: Analyses and Applications of Incentive Regulation

Under the enhanced single buyer model of electricity supply industry in Thailand, tariff regulation is needed to prevent unfair pricing for consumers. Retail electricity tariff, being separated into base tariff and automatic tariff adjustment mechanism, has been regulated by multiple regulatory bodies. Findings reveal that Thai electricity base tariff regulations tended to favor electric utilities rather than consumers, basing on rate of return regulatory approach. In addition, the automatic tariff adjustment mechanism attached greater importance to operators than to the consumers, enabling the former to fully pass the fuel and power purchase burdens through to the consumers. The results of adoption of current regulatory regime are excess capacity in electricity supply industry and excessive profits for electric utilities. This paper, thus, explores the tariff regulatory alternatives that could enhance efficiency of electricity operators while providing benefits to consumers. Under the price cap regulation, electricity tariffs are estimated with various X and Z factors. The results reveal that the simulated electricity tariffs under incentive regulatory approach are lower than the actual tariff. It implies that if Thailand adopted the price cap regulation, consumers would have benefited from the lower tariff whereas firms would have been incentivized to improve efficiency.

Multiple Discrimination in a Multicultural Europe: Achieving Labour Market Equality Through New Governance

This paper interrogates the extent to which, within the European Union, ‘hybrid’ approaches to combating labour market discrimination – combining ‘old governance’ regulatory mechanisms (such as the Race Directive) and alternatives to hard law, such as gender mainstreaming and diversity management – have the potential to provide a stronger framework for internalizing equality values. Before turning to the interaction between new and old governance within the EU anti-discrimination regime, the paper examines a number of background issues: the labour market situation of ethnic minority women in the European Union; the differing understandings of race and ethnicity across the various EU Member States; Member States’ divergent approaches to the management of minority populations and competing understandings of diversity. A preliminary conclusion is that the possibility of a hybrid approach at EU level, drawing on for instance both the Race Directive and mainstreaming, is constrained by competing national paradigms in discourses around race and multiculturalism, and the resultant differences in approach to the use of ‘race’ as a valid analytical category.

A Deadly Consensus: Worker Safety and Regulatory Degradation under New Labour

This paper documents the vulnerability of the UK workplace safety regime to ‘regulatory degradation’. Following a brief overview of this regime, the paper examines the dominant arguments within academic literature on appropriate and feasible regulatory enforcement, arguing that the approaches to regulation thereby advocated have been easily degraded as a result of their compatibility with neo-liberal economic strategy. A subsequent analysis of empirical trends within safety enforcement reveals a virtual collapse of formal enforcement, as political and resource pressures have taken their toll on the regulatory authority. Finally, the paper indicates that the increasing impunity with which employers can kill and injure is particularly problematic as we enter sustained economic recession, and underlines the urgent need for regulatory alternatives.

Restricted Autoantigen Recognition Associated with Deletional and Adaptive Regulatory Mechanisms

Autoimmune diabetes (T1D) is characterized by CD4(+) T cell reactivity to a variety of islet-associated Ags. At-risk individuals, genetically predisposed to T1D, often have similar T cell reactivity, but nevertheless fail to progress to clinically overt disease. To study the immune tolerance and regulatory environment permissive for such autoreactive T cells, we expressed TCR transgenes derived from two autoreactive human T cells, 4.13 and 164, in HLA-DR4 transgenic mice on a C57BL/6-derived "diabetes-resistant" background. Both TCR are responsive to an immunodominant epitope of glutamic acid decarboxylase 65(555-567), which is identical in sequence between humans and mice, is restricted by HLA-DR4, and is a naturally processed self Ag associated with T1D. Although both TCR use the identical Valpha and Vbeta genes, differing only in CDR3, we found stark differences in the mechanisms utilized in vivo in the maintenance of immune tolerance. A combination of thymic deletion (negative selection), TCR down-regulation, and peripheral activation-induced cell death dominated the phenotype of 164 T cells, which nevertheless still maintain their Ag responsiveness in the periphery. In contrast, 4.13 T cells are much less influenced by central and deletional tolerance mechanisms, and instead display a peripheral immune deviation including differentiation into IL-10-secreting Tr1 cells. These findings indicate a distinct set of regulatory alternatives for autoreactive T cells, even within a single highly restricted HLA-peptide-TCR recognition profile.

Cost, Effectiveness, and Cost-Effectiveness

Pluck the goose so as to obtain the most feathers with the least hissing . — —Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Minister of Finance to King Louis XIV of France Incremental or marginal cost-effectiveness ratios are founded on a number of assumptions that weaken their suitability as a way to balance competing economic and clinical priorities. We therefore propose a more relevant and responsible way to gauge the impact of clinical management strategies based on “consumer protection” principles—explicit disclosure of (1) the total magnitude of expected benefit in the target population (in life-years or quality-adjusted life-years), (2) the total monetary cost (in per capita inflation-adjusted dollars), and (3) a formal plan by which the added costs would be paid. Health policy decisions should therefore be based on the inherent trade-offs in the component measures of cost and effectiveness and not on a simple ratio of the two. Cost-effectiveness ratios are thereby rendered superfluous. Incremental or marginal cost-effectiveness ratios are widely viewed as rational ways to balance competing clinical and economic priorities that arise as a consequence of the inevitable disconnect between an individual’s wants and the society’s willingness to pay for those wants.1–5 The purpose of this essay is to question the practical relevance of these ratios with respect to strategic planning in health care, and offer a suitable alternative. In doing so, we will focus on the more pragmatic issues underlying cost-effectiveness analysis, and gloss over a variety of technical details such as the difference between a privately financed free market and the publicly financed healthcare market, between costs and charges, and between unadjusted and quality-adjusted outcomes. Our pragmatic perspective is not likely to be welcomed by orthodox experts in cost-effectiveness analysis. We believe, however, that any such criticisms can be blunted by recognizing the important distinctions between regulatory and clinical …

Multiple Discrimination in a Multicultural Europe: Achieving Labour Market Equality Through New Governance

This paper interrogates the extent to which, within the European Union, ‘hybrid’ approaches to combating labour market discrimination – combining ‘old governance’ regulatory mechanisms (such as the Race Directive) and alternatives to hard law, such as gender mainstreaming and diversity management – have the potential to provide a stronger framework for internalizing equality values. Before turning to the interaction between new and old governance within the EU anti-discrimination regime, the paper examines a number of background issues: the labour market situation of ethnic minority women in the European Union; the differing understandings of race and ethnicity across the various EU Member States; Member States’ divergent approaches to the management of minority populations and competing understandings of diversity. A preliminary conclusion is that the possibility of a hybrid approach at EU level, drawing on for instance both the Race Directive and mainstreaming, is constrained by competing national paradigms in discourses around race and multiculturalism, and the resultant differences in approach to the use of ‘race’ as a valid analytical category.

The Evolving Role of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget in Regulatory Policy

Since the early Reagan years, critics have argued that benefit-cost analysis is used by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a one-sided tool of deregulation to advance the interests of business. This article discloses a little-known fact: OMB also plays a powerful pro-regulation role when agency proposals address market failures and are supported by benefit-cost analysis. Drawing on four case studies from the George W. Bush Administration, the author examines how and why OMB encouraged regulatory initiatives while protecting some rulemakings from opposition by forces inside and outside of the executive branch. The case studies address the labeling of foods for trans fat content, control of diesel engine exhaust, improvement of light-truck fuel economy, and control of air pollution from coal-fired power plants. OMB's role in the 2001-2006 period was unusual by historic standards because, rather than await agency drafts, OMB played a pro-active role in both the initiation of rulemakings and the creation of regulatory alternatives for consideration. The benefit-cost framework could be much more powerful if greater investments were made in applied research to expand knowledge on key regulatory issues.