Trucking Efficiency Versus Transportation Efficiency: An Economic Evaluation of TRB Special Report 267

2003 ◽  
Vol 1833 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard J. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transportation Policy ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Special Report ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
Truck Size And Weight ◽  
Freight Market ◽  
Commercial Motor Vehicles

TRB Special Report 267: Regulation of Weights, Lengths, and Widths of Commercial Motor Vehicles is critically evaluated. It is an important, congressionally mandated report that contains a series of conclusions and recommendations regarding truck size and weight (TS&W) regulations in the United States. The report concludes that increases in TS&W limits have great potential for increasing freight market efficiency but that safety and other effects are not well understood. To facilitate the liberalization of TS&W limits, the report recommends a revised regulatory regime that would involve federal supervision of state-set limits, with evaluation provided by an independent Commercial Traffic Effects Institute. This evaluation argues that the report focuses too narrowly on trucking efficiency and overlooks transportation efficiency. This narrow analytical perspective significantly limits its usefulness in establishing national transportation policy. Also, there is no analytical basis for the report's most important conclusions and recommendations, either in the report or in earlier TS&W studies evaluated by the Committee for the Study of the Regulation of Weights, Lengths, and Widths of Commercial Motor Vehicles.

scholarly journals Disrupting Regulation, Regulating Disruption: The Politics of Uber in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Berins Collier ◽  
V.B. Dubal ◽  
Christopher L. Carter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Labor Issues ◽  
Regulatory Regimes

Platform companies disrupt not only the economic sectors they enter, but also the regulatory regimes that govern those sectors. We examine Uber in the United States as a case of regulating this disruption in different arenas: cities, state legislatures, and judicial venues. We find that the politics of Uber regulation does not conform to existing models of regulation. We describe instead a pattern of “disruptive regulation”, characterized by a challenger-incumbent cleavage, in two steps. First, an existing regulatory regime is not deregulated but successfully disregarded by a new entrant. Second, the politics of subsequently regulating the challenger leads to a dual regulatory regime. In the case of Uber, disruptive regulation takes the form of challenger capture, an elite-driven pattern, in which the challenger has largely prevailed. It is further characterized by the surrogate representation of dispersed actors—customers and drivers—who do not have autonomous power and who rely instead on shifting alignments with the challenger and incumbent. In its surrogate capacity in city and state regulation, Uber has frequently mobilized large numbers of customers and drivers to lobby for policy outcomes that allow it to continue to provide service on terms it finds acceptable. Because drivers have reaped less advantage from these alignments, labor issues have been taken up in judicial venues, again primarily by surrogates (usually plaintiffs’ attorneys) but to date have not been successful.

Rethinking Market Regulation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John N. Drobak
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
The Past ◽  
United States Today ◽  
The Common ◽  
The U.S

Rethinking Market Regulation: Helping Labor by Overcoming Economic Myths tackles the plight of workers who lose their jobs from mergers and outsourcing by examining two economic “principles,” or narratives that have shaped the perception of the economic system in the United States today: (1) the notion that the U.S. economy is competitive, making government market regulation unnecessary, and (2) the claim that corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders but not for other stakeholders. Contrary to popular belief, this book demonstrates that many markets are not competitive but rather are oligopolistic. This conclusion undercuts the common refrain that government market regulation is unnecessary because competition already provides sufficient constraints on business. Part of the lack of competition has resulted from the large mergers over the past few years, many of which have resulted in massive layoffs. The second narrative has justified the outsourcing of millions of jobs of U.S. workers this century, made possible by globalization. The book argues that this narrative is not an economic principle but rather a normative position. In effect, both narratives are myths, although they are accepted as truisms by many people. The book ties together a concern for the problems of using economic principles as a justification for the lack of government intervention with the harm that has been caused to workers. The book’s recommendations for a new regulatory regime are a prescription for helping labor by limiting job losses from mergers and outsourcing.

Drivers of Financial Deregulation in Japan

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Eiji Hotori
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Financial Market ◽  
Financial Innovation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Government ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
Capital Movement ◽  
Government Bonds ◽  
Financial Deregulation ◽  
Over Time

This chapter aims to identify the real drivers of financial deregulation in Japan. Japan’s financial deregulation drivers clearly changed over time. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the liberalization of capital movement in Japan caused an administrative shift from its conventional rigid regulatory regime. From the mid-1970s, a rapid increase of Japanese government bonds issuances, as well as financial innovation, acted to remove the barriers between the banking and the securities businesses. From the mid-1980s, the pressure from the United States, as well as from domestic depositors and banks, urged the Japanese financial authorities to liberalize the financial market. It is evident that the drivers of financial deregulation in Japan in the 1980s were not only the pressure from abroad (as generally accepted), but that the deregulation was also driven by domestic interests including fiscal reasons.

The U.S. Federal Gasoline Tax: Time for a Change?

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
David Besanko ◽  
Saahil Malik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Federal Budget ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transportation Policy ◽  
Pigouvian Tax ◽  
Gasoline Tax ◽  
Gasoline Consumption ◽  
Efficient Level ◽  
Gasoline Taxes ◽  
The U.S

Although the federal gasoline tax played multiple roles in financing surface transportation infrastructure in the United States, experts did not agree on the tax's purpose. Some argued that it was essentially a fee for users of the nation's federally supported highways. Others suggested that it should play a more prominent role in environmental, energy, and transportation policy by correcting for driving-related externalities. Still others suggested that it should be used to reduce the federal budget deficit. Finally, the tax itself had remained at the same level since 1993, and with the Highway Trust Fund virtually insolvent, many experts believed it was time for an increase. The case presents a background on the U.S. federal gasoline tax, an overview of the market for gasoline in the United States, and survey of gasoline taxes in U.S. states as well as several other countries around the world.The case can be used to discuss the incidence of the gasoline tax, as well as its role as a Pigouvian tax to deal with negative externalities related to gasoline consumption and driving. There is sufficient data in the case to enable students to analyze the incidence of the federal gasoline tax and to determine the socially efficient level of the tax in light of externalities related to gasoline consumption and driving.

Federalism, State Action, and “Critical Episodes” in the Growth of American Government: Reply to Ballard Campbell

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-582
Author(s):  
Robert Higgs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Government ◽  
State Action ◽  
Analytical Perspective ◽  
History Of

Ballard Campbell claims to have identified “flaws in [the] analytical perspective” I employed in Crisis and Leviathan (1987). My sins of omission, he alleges, arise from concentrating on the growth of federal economic powers, thereby losing sight of the various noneconomic dimensions of government and “ignoring the reality of federalism in the United States,” especially before 1930. The upshot is “an imbalance that distorts the history of American governance.”

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