The Half-Life of Policy Rationales

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales PDF Author: Fred E. Foldvary
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479859028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The Half-Life of Policy Rationales argues that the appropriateness of policy depends on the state of technology, and that the justifications for many public policies are dissolving as technology advances. As new detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, and auto emissions, and information becomes more accessible and user-friendly, this volume argues that quality and safety are better handled by the private sector. As for public utilities, new means of producing and delivering electricity, water, postal, and telephone services dissolve the old natural-monopolies rationales of the government. This volume includes essays on marine resources, lighthouses, highways, parking, auto emissions, consumer product safety, money and banking, medical licensing, electricity, water delivery, postal service, community governance, and endangered species. The editors have mobilized the hands-on knowledge of field experts to develop theories about technology and public policy. The Half-Life of Policy Rationales will be of interest to readers in public policy, technology, property rights, and economics.

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales PDF Author: Fred E. Foldvary
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479859028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The Half-Life of Policy Rationales argues that the appropriateness of policy depends on the state of technology, and that the justifications for many public policies are dissolving as technology advances. As new detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, and auto emissions, and information becomes more accessible and user-friendly, this volume argues that quality and safety are better handled by the private sector. As for public utilities, new means of producing and delivering electricity, water, postal, and telephone services dissolve the old natural-monopolies rationales of the government. This volume includes essays on marine resources, lighthouses, highways, parking, auto emissions, consumer product safety, money and banking, medical licensing, electricity, water delivery, postal service, community governance, and endangered species. The editors have mobilized the hands-on knowledge of field experts to develop theories about technology and public policy. The Half-Life of Policy Rationales will be of interest to readers in public policy, technology, property rights, and economics.

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales PDF Author: Fred E. Foldvary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The justification for any public policies are dissolving as technology advances. New detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, marine farming, and auto emissions, making property-rights solutions viable. Information becomes more accessible and user-friendly, suggesting that quality and safety are better handled by the private sector, undercutting consumer-protection rationales. As for public utilities, new means of producing and delivering electricity, water, postal, and telephone services dissolve the old natural-monopoly rationales for control and governmental provision. Most market-failure arguments boil down to claims about market mechanisms being blocked by transaction costs. But technology has trimmed transaction costs and made the old rationales for government intervention increasingly obsolete. Besides trimming transaction costs, technological advancements accelerates economic change and multiplies the connections between activities. It brings fundamental upsets to even our best understandings of current arrangements and their shortcomings. Thus, by making the economic system ever more complex, it makes the notion that regultors can meaningfully know and beneficially manipulate the system ever less credible. Technology sets what may be called an intellectual half-life on policies and their justification.

Theory of Technology

Theory of Technology PDF Author: David Clarke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351472178
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The history of technology is often troubled by good ideas that do not, for one reason or another, take off right away--sometimes for millennia. Sometimes, technology comes to a standstill, and sometimes, it even reverses itself. Thus, unlike science, which seems to proceed at a reasonable and calm rate, the progress of technology is difficult to theorize about. While in science many developments are predictable to a certain extent and this predictability may, at times, direct or stymie science's progress--as with stem-cell research and cloning--technological advances, such as the Internet, are often sudden and unpredictable, and therefore frightening. In Theory of Technology, David Clarke brings together nine authors who try to understand technology from a variety of viewpoints. Rias van Wyk, in "Technology," parses the concept into many angles, including its anatomy, taxonomy, and evolution. Karol Pelc, in "Knowledge Mapping," discusses tracking the evolution of the emerging discipline of technology management. Jon Beard, in "Management of Technology," pursues a similar mapping endeavor, but looks to the patterns of the literature of technology management. Thomas Clarke, in "Unique Features of an R&D Work Environment and Research Scientists and Engineers," takes the reader on a tour of how people of technology present unique challenges to not just management but whole organizations. Richard Howey, in "Understanding Software Technology," places enterprise software into a meaningful pattern of technology management. Fred Foldvary and Daniel Klein, in "The Half-Life of Policy Rationales," discuss how new technology affects old policy issues. John Cogan, in "Some Philosophical Thoughts on the Nature of Technology," maintains that our Aristotelian search for the essence of technology is doomed. And Peter Bond, in "The Biology of Technology," establishes a basis for the development of a socio-biological approach to understanding the pheno

Readings in Applied Microeconomics

Readings in Applied Microeconomics PDF Author: Craig Newmark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135969450
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
This reader encourages students to appreciate the power of the market, including specific examples and addressing questions on whether markets actually work well and offering evidence that market failures are not as serious or as common as claimed.

Street Smart

Street Smart PDF Author: Gabriel Roth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351487892
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 675

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Book Description
The poor health of today's roads--a subject close to the hearts of motorists, taxpayers, and government treasurers around the world--has resulted from faulty incentives that misdirect government decision-makers, according to the contributors to Street Smart. During the 1990s, bad government decision-making resulted in the U.S. Interstate Highway System growing by only one seventh the rate of traffic growth. The poor maintenance of existing roads is another concern. In cities around the world, highly political and wasteful government decision-making has led to excessive traffic congestion that has created long commutes, reduced safety, and caused loss of leisure time.Street Smart examines the privatization of roads in theory and in practice. The authors see at least four possible roles for private companies, beyond the well-known one of working under contract to design, build, or maintain governmentally provided roads. These include testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. Two chapters describe the history of private roads in the United Kingdom and the United States. Contemporary examples are provided of road pricing, privatizing, and contracting out are evident in environs as diverse as Singapore, Southern California, and Scandinavia, and cities as different as Bergen, Norway, and London, England. Finally, several chapters examine strategies for implementing privatization. The principles governing providing scarce resources in free societies are well known. We apply them to such necessities as energy, food, and water so why not to "road space"? The main obstacle to private, or semi-private, ownership of roads is likely to remain the reluctance of the political class to give up a lucrative source of power and influence.Those who want decisions about road services to be controlled by the interplay of consumers and suppliers in free markets, rat

Cities and Private Planning

Cities and Private Planning PDF Author: David Emanuel Andersson
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1783475064
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Through comprehensive case studies of privately planned cities and neighbourhood in Asia, Europe and North America, this book characterizes the theoretical basis and empirical manifestations of private urban planning. In this innovative volume, Anderss

Housing America

Housing America PDF Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351514997
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Housing policy not only aff ects all Americans' quality of life, but has a direct impact on their fi nancial well being. About 70 percent of American households own their own homes, and for most, their homes represent the majority of their net worth. Renters are aff ected by housing policy. Even the small minority of Americans who are homeless are aff ected by housing policies specifi cally targeted to low-income individuals.The government's increasing involvement in housing markets, fed by popular demand that government "do something" to address real problems of mortgage defaults and loans, provides good reason to take a new look at the public sector in housing markets. Crises in prime mortgage lending may lower the cost of housing, but the poor and homeless cannot benefi t because of increases in unemployment. Even the private market is heavily regulated. Government policies dictate whether people can build new housing on their land, what type of housing they can build, the terms allowed in rental contracts, and much more.This volume considers the eff ects of government housing policies and what can be done to make them work better. It shows that many problems are the result of government rules and regulations. Even in a time of foreclosures, the market can still do a crucial a job of allocating resources, just as it does in other markets. Consequently, the appropriate policy response may well be to signifi cantly reduce, not increase, government presence in housing markets. Housing America is a courageous and comprehensive eff ort to examine housing policies in the United States and to show how such policies aff ect the housing market.

Contractual Communities in the Self-Organising City

Contractual Communities in the Self-Organising City PDF Author: Grazia Brunetta
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940072859X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
Both “land-use regulation” and “territorial collective services” have traditionally been accomplished in cities through coercive efforts of public administrations. Recently, land-use regulation and collective service provision regimes have emerged within “contractual communities:” territory-based organisations (usually, but not exclusively residential) such as homeowners’ associations. This book examines the problems and opportunities of contractual communities, avoiding both the alarmism and unwarranted apologies found in much of the literature on contractual communities. The central notion is that cases in which coercive action by a public agency was deemed indispensable have been unjustly overstated, while the potential benefits of voluntary self-organising processes have been seriously understated. The authors propose a revised notion of the state role that allows ample leeway for contractual communities of all forms.

Knowledge and Coordination

Knowledge and Coordination PDF Author: Daniel B. Klein
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019979412X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This text was the basis for a presentation of the book Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 2012). The lecture discusses the richness of knowledge, the distinction between concatenate and mutual coordination, and the relation of these to a liberal outlook that the author associates with Adam Smith.

Who Rules the Net?

Who Rules the Net? PDF Author: Adam D. Thierer
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 9781930865433
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
The rise of the World Wide Web is challenging traditional concepts of jurisdiction, governance, and sovereignty. Many observers have praised the Internet for its ubiquitous and "borderless" nature and argued that this global medium is revolutionizing the nature of modern communications. Indeed, in the universe of cyberspace there are no passports and geography is often treated as a meaningless concept. But does that mean traditional concepts of jurisdiction and governance are obsolete? When legal disputes arise in cyberspace, or when governments attempt to apply their legal standards or cultural norms to the Internet, how are such matters to be adjudicated? Cultural norms and regulatory approaches vary from country to country, as reflected in such policies as free speech and libel standards, privacy policies, intellectual property, antitrust law, domain name dispute resolution, and tax policy. In each of those areas, policymakers have for years enacted myriad laws and regulations for "realspace" that are now being directly challenged by the rise of the parallel electronic universe known as cyberspace. Who is responsible for setting the standards in cyberspace? Is a "U.N. for the Internet" or a multinational treaty appropriate? If not, whose standards should govern cross-border cyber disputes? Are different standards appropriate for cyberspace and "real" space? Those questions are being posed with increasing frequency in the emerging field of cyber-law and constitute the guiding theme of this book's collection of essays. Book jacket.