Problematic Status of Corporate Regulation in the United States: Towards a New Moral Order

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 705-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
G L Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Corporate Restructuring ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
Contractual Agreements ◽  
Benefit Cost

Evidence on the geographical dimensions of corporate restructuring in the United States suggests that, if left to themselves, corporations often break the law or at least the spirit of law in furthering their economic interests. The design and implementation of restructuring involving the spatial relocation of work is in many instances conceived with the goal of circumventing corporations' social obligations. Workers' pension entitlements (and their contractual agreements with corporations on many other matters) are at risk when the economic imperatives of competition and technical innovation are the driving forces behind corporations' actions. These issues are explored with respect to rational choice theory, advancing an argument to the effect that if corporate restructuring is only understood in these terms, the prospects for effective public regulation are bleak indeed. A regulatory framework that explicitly references moral standards could be, however, more effective because the terms of evaluation would be legitimately other than simple benefit-cost analysis. This last argument is briefly illustrated by reference to the moral component inherent in making contracts between agents.

Guardian Angels

2020 ◽  
pp. 267-292
Author(s):  
Dominic D. P. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Effective Strategies

This chapter presents a summary of the findings and explores the implications of the new evolutionary perspective on cognitive biases for international relations. It concludes that the cognitive biases are adaptive in a way that strategic instincts help individuals, state leaders, and nations achieve their goals. It also reviews effective strategies that often differ radically from those predicted by conventional paradigms, such as the rational choice theory. The chapter offers novel interpretations of historical events, especially the American Revolution, the British appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, and the United States' Pacific campaign in World War II. It examines counterintuitive strategies for leaders and policymakers to exploit strategic instincts among themselves, the public, and other states.

European and International Perspectives on Benefit-Cost Analysis: Symposium Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Massimo Florio
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cost Analysis ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Public Project ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
Regulatory Impact Analysis ◽  
Benefit Cost

AbstractThe idea of assessing the costs and benefits of public and private projects is not new to Europe, dating back to studies at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (Paris) in the XIX century. Later on, in the last century, Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) in its current form has been more extensively used in the United States than in Europe. In the last two decades, however, there has been a rapid increase in its use in a number of European countries and at the European Union (EU) level. European governments often undertake tasks that would be done by private companies in the United States, such as the provision of transport, energy, water and waste management, health services, etc. In the United States the focus of BCA has often been regulatory impact analysis, rather than public project evaluation. One might, therefore, expect that Europeans might approach some things differently from their American counterparts and that new insights might result from these efforts. The articles in this symposium, taken from the recent European Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis (SBCA) conference in Toulouse, illustrate some of these differences and some converging themes.

Structure and Virtue in United States Political Economy

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary O. Furner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Salvage Operation ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Liberal Reform ◽  
The One

During a crucial period of United States history, 1880s–1940s, ideas developed in political economy were the core component of a transformation in the way Americans thought about the social and political order. These decades, the era of the elaboration in the United States and internationally of what historians of liberal reform thought refer to as the New Liberalism, were the site of a general reassessment of the constitutive ideologies, Smithian/Lockean liberalism, and a democratized, commercialized version of classical republicanism hanging over from the agrarian republic. Scary, unexpectedly turbulent conditions in an economy plagued by recurrent cyclical downturns in investment and employment, accompanied by unprecedented levels of social conflict, placed a premium on new knowledge. This need arose just as the academic professionalization of the social sciences, the rise of critical political journalism, and highly mobilized women's and labor movements began providing impressive new analytical talent. Efforts to find answers to pressing issues raised by the “social question” were intended initially by most of those involved as a salvage operation for what remained valid among key tenets of American liberalism regarding individualism, competition, the efficacy of the market, and the role of the state. Instead, they led ultimately to a reconstruction in public philosophy, at least on the scale of the one underway since the 1970s, with the “the return of the market,” the unprecedented sway of neoclassicism, and the multidisciplinary appeal of rational choice theory.

scholarly journals Institutional partisanship

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-161
Author(s):  
Aaron T. Walter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Imperial Presidency

Abstract The balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of government in the United States has held firm despite the evolution of each branch. Moreover, as the primacy of one branch succumbed to the dominance of the other there remained a constant variable. Partisanship existed since the American founding, however, the importance of Congressional partisanship in the later half of the nineteenth century and rise of the imperial presidency in the twentieth century highlight the formidable challenges of divided government in the United States. The following paper utilizes rational choice theory in political science to explain decision making of American political leaders though inclusion of casual and descriptive examples highlight certain choices within

Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze? A Benefit/Cost Analysis of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Wolf ◽  
Michael McShane
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Private School ◽  
The United States ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Cost Ratio ◽  
Economic Returns ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
Benefit Cost Ratio ◽  
Scholarship Program ◽  
Benefit Cost

School voucher programs have become a prominent aspect of the education policy landscape in the United States. The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is the only federally funded voucher program in the United States. Since 2004 it has offered publicly funded private school vouchers to nearly four thousand students to attend any of seventy-three different private schools in Washington, DC. An official experimental evaluation of the program, sponsored by the federal government's Institute of Education Sciences, found that the students who were awarded Opportunity Scholarships graduated from high school at a rate 12 percentage points higher than the students in the randomized control group. This article estimates the benefit/cost ratio of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, primarily by considering the increased graduation rate that it induced and the estimated positive economic returns to increased educational attainment. We find a benefit to cost ratio of 2.62, or $2.62 in benefits for every dollar spent on the program.

Environmental Benefit-Cost Analysis: A Comparative Analysis Between the United States and the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph E. Aldy ◽  
Giles Atkinson ◽  
Matthew J. Kotchen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Cost Analysis ◽  
Resource Economics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Environmental Benefit ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
Benefit Cost

The United States and United Kingdom have long-standing traditions in the use of environmental benefit-cost analysis (E-BCA). While there are similarities between how E-BCA is utilized, there are significant differences too, many of which mirror ongoing debates and recent developments in the literature on environmental and natural resource economics. We review the use of E-BCA in both countries across three themes: ( a) the role of long-term discounting, ( b) the estimation and use of carbon valuation, and ( c) the estimation and use of the value of a statistical life. In each case, we discuss how academic developments are (and are not) translated into practical use and draw comparative lessons. We find that, in some cases, practical differences in E-BCA can be overstated, although in others these seem more substantive. Advances in the academic frontier also raise the question of when and how to update practical E-BCA, with very different answers across our themes. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 13 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Rethinking Hydropower: The Economics and Politics of Privately Owned Hydropower in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Lewis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fish Passage ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
20Th Anniversary ◽  
Kennebec River ◽  
Dam Removals ◽  
Benefit Cost ◽  
Privately Owned ◽  
Economics And Politics

2019 marked the 20th anniversary of the removal of the Edwards Dam in Augusta, Maine (USA). Edwards Dam was the first federally licensed hydropower dam to be denied relicensing, and the dam was removed for the purpose of restoring the 10 anadromous fish species that use the Kennebec River. Since that time, numerous other small dams have been removed in the United States. The relicensing process considers benefit-cost analysis, yet remains fundamentally flawed in the consideration of the benefits of dam removals and fish passage. Successful dam removals rely (mostly) on local efforts and outside analysis.

scholarly journals Application of BCA in Europe – Experiences and Challenges

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Andersson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Investment Project ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Benefit Cost Analysis ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Project Appraisal ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Benefit Cost

Although benefit-cost analysis (BCA) can be traced back to European thinkers, its first practical applications were in the United States. Recent years have witnessed a growing demand for economic appraisals of policies in different sectors in Europe, but the implementation rate is still low compared to that in the United States. This article introduces a symposium that includes four articles that present current examples of how BCA is being applied in different sectors and in different institutional settings in Europe. They deal with environmental valuation in the United Kingdom, economic analysis for investment in Sweden’s transport sector, economic versus financial returns in European Union investment project appraisal, and BCA in EU chemicals legislation. The goal is to stimulate continuing discussion on the implementation of BCA, not only in Europe but also worldwide.

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