Do Restrictive Land Use Regulations Make Housing More Expensive Everywhere?

This study makes three contributions to the debate over the effect of local land use regulations on housing prices and affordability. First, it is more geographically extensive than previous studies, encompassing 336 of the nation's 384 metropolitan areas. Second, it looks at multiple measures of regulatory stringency, not just one. Most prior studies have focused either on a single regulatory measure or index across multiple metropolitan areas, or multiple regulatory measures in a single region. Third, this paper considers the connection between regulatory stringency and housing values as a function of employment growth and per-worker payroll levels. We find that restrictive land use regulations do indeed have a pervasive effect on local home values and rents, and that these effects are magnified in faster-growing and more prosperous economies. We also find more restrictive land use regulations are not associated with faster rates of recent home value or rent growth, and that their effects on housing construction levels—that is, the degree to which they constrain supply—is uneven among different housing markets.

Individual Parental Leave for Fathers: Promoting Gender Equality in Norway

This chapter takes as its point of departure the design elements of the Norwegian parental leave system for fathers and examines how it works as a regulatory measure to promote equality in care work. The findings show that the design of the father’s quota as a statutory, earmarked, and non-transferrable right for fathers promotes the fathers’ use of leave and hence equality. The earmarking, and the fact that it cannot be transferred to the mother, renders it unnecessary for fathers to negotiate with the mother about this leave. The father’s quota is also an important bargaining chip in relation to working life for having time off for doing care-work. These findings support other research on fathers’ use of leave which have shown that these design characteristics of father’s quota represents a strong incentive for greater involvement in caregiving on the part of fathers.

Regulatory Standards and Measures

Blockchain technology is an emerging technology which has caught the attention of practitioners, governments, business enterprises including the academic researchers in this present century. Its attraction is mainly due to its potential to enhance the human way of doing things including service delivery and consequently leading to happier consumers and stakeholders and providing an edge over competitors, resulting in an improved brand image. Unfortunately, the adoption of a new technology is not all other easy, it takes time and effort. The major issue of the technology is the lack of regulatory measure framework to boost its acceptability among many countries of the world. Both practitioners and scholars have agreed that the technology needs to be validated, regulated, and adopted. Unfortunately, this is yet to be achieved. The chapter examined regulatory standard measures of blockchain technology as a panacea for blockchain technology acceptability. It adopts a literature review approach with a content analysis technique where several but selected views and opinions of countries on the regulatory positions were analysed. Evidence shows that the absence of regulatory measure standard is fear to non-acceptability and accessibility of blockchain technology. It also revealed that a specific regulatory standard is needed to drive the acceptability and accessibility of blockchain technology not only in Saudi Arabia but also in the globe. This paper therefore concludes that a specific regulatory measure and standard is a panacea to the acceptability and accessibility of blockchain technology.

Regulatory Issues of Digital Currencies

With the rapid development of the Internet and electronic payment, digital currencies with blockchain as the underlying technology have gradually entered people's horizons and have also received the attention of governments around the world. Due to the convenience and decentralization of digital currency transactions that are not limited by time and region, it has a significant impact on traditional commercial systems around the world, and its core block chain technology may trigger changes in many areas. At present, different countries have different views on the legal status of bitcoin digital currencies, but digital currencies circulate across borders and regions. Once problems arise, it is difficult to have a unified regulatory measure to deal with them.

ESRB and PEGI’s Flawed ‘Includes Random Items’ Label- Self-Regulation of Random Reward Mechanisms (e.g. Loot Boxes) Alone Fails to Ensure Consumer Protection

This is a pre-print of an article accepted for publication in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. The final authenticated version will be available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00329-6. The three flaws of the ESRB and PEGI's introduction of the 'Includes Random Items' label are identified. This self-regulatory measure fails to provide sufficient information about the randomised in-game purchase mechanics; does not appropriately identify gambling as gambling and fails to guarantee minimum age ratings to protect young children; and can be circumvented with a separate line of products. Self-regulation alone is insufficient at protecting consumers from loot box-related harms. Legal restrictions on the sale of loot boxes in the short-term and the adoption of ethical game design by the industry in the long term are necessary to ensure consumer protection.

Conquering the inner couch potato: precommitment is an effective strategy to enhance motivation for effortful actions

Letting effort-free gratification derail us from effort-requiring goals is one reason why we fail to realize health-relevant intentions like ‘exercise regularly’. We tested the effectiveness of the self-control strategy precommitment in such effort-related conflicts, using a novel laboratory choice paradigm, where participants could precommit to an effort-requiring large reward by pre-eliminating an effort-free small reward from their choice set. Our participants used precommitment frequently and effectively, such that they reached effort-requiring large rewards more often. Using computational modelling and Bayesian model comparisons, we assessed whether participants employed precommitment to avoid anticipated willpower failures (i.e. as a self-regulatory measure) or to maximize their motivation to choose the effort-requiring option (i.e. as a self-motivational measure). Observed choices and precommitment decisions were consistent with the motivation maximization hypothesis, but not the willpower hypothesis. Our findings show that offering precommitment is effective in helping individuals optimize their motivation and choice behaviour and thereby achieve effort-requiring goals, and strongly encourage application of precommitment schemes in exercise and rehabilitation interventions. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Risk taking and impulsive behaviour: fundamental discoveries, theoretical perspectives and clinical implications’.

Analysis of the tobacco industry’s interference in the enforcement of health warnings on tobacco products in Brazil

This article aims to analyze the relationship between the Brazilian government’s adoption of a regulatory measure with a strong impact on the population and the opposition by invested interest groups. The methodology involves the analysis of official documents on the enforcement of health warnings on tobacco products sold in Brazil. In parallel, a search was conducted for publicly available tobacco industry documents resulting from lawsuits, with the aim of identifying the industry’s reactions to this process. The findings suggest that various government acts were affected by direct interference from the tobacco industry. In some cases the interventions were explicit and in others they were indirect or difficult to identify. In light of the study’s theoretical framework, the article provides original information on the Brazilian process that can be useful for government policymakers in the strategic identification of tobacco control policies.

Environmental quality: impact of economic growth

Using a vertically differentiated product model, the paper aims to investigate the effects of economic growth on market provision of product quality. The quality attribute considered is the environmental friendliness of products. Economic growth is modeled as a shift in income distribution. It shows that the effect of economic growth depends on the form it takes. A growth in income that is uniform across consumers improves the cleanup levels adopted by both firms. However, a growth in income that is accompanied by changes in income inequality may result in the lowering of one of the two qualities. More specifically, if the growth in income is accompanied by increased disparities in income distribution, the quality of the (environmentally) inferior variant is reduced. This has serious implications for the poor consumers if the product has safety or health hazards. The paper suggests a regulatory measure to prevent such deterioration in the quality of the inferior variant.

Intervenções Regulatórias, Volatilidade e Contágio: Uma Análise VIRF

This paper examines how regulatory interventions can affect the market risk of electricity utilities and telecom carriers traded in the Brazilian stock market (BOVESPA). Our article uses a bivariate Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH - BEKK) model to analyze the impact of two relevant and surprising measures taken by the correspondent Brazilian regulatory authorities in 2012 (one in each sector) on both markets’ volatilities and covariance. We also adopt the volatility impulse response function (VIRF) developed by Hafner & Herwartz (2006) to estimate their persistence. On the one hand, the results indicate that the effects of the telecommunications’ regulatory intervention are negligible but, on the other hand, the impact of the electricity's regulatory measure is significant, long-lasting and contagious.