Deregulation in Austria

Abstract. Since the new grand coalition government took office in 1986, deregulation has become an official goal of government policy in Austria. The article describes debates, measures and countervailing tendencies in three areas of deregulation: delegislation, privatization and the promotion of competition. Because deregulation initiatives have not been very effective the conclusion discusses political constraints and opportunities for such policies in the future.     

Neoclassical Difficulties: Tort Deterrence for Latent Injuries*

Economists often claim that the tort system leads firms to provide consumers and workers with the socially optimal level of safety. Moreover, in the case of work-related hazards, employers are alleged to have another source of incentives to take precautions. If wages are sensitive to job-related risks, employers should spend money to reduce such risks when, by doing so, they can save more in wage costs than the costs of the precautions taken. Whatever their merits in other settings, in the case of latent injuries such as workplace exposure to asbestos neither tort nor market are likely to provide an optimal level of safety; indeed, they have failed to do so in the examples we discuss. We find that the introduction of a long delay between the exposure to a hazard and the onset of symptoms introduces a variety of empirical complications that overwhelm the assumptions on which the neoclassical model rests. Our conclusion is thus that comparisons between tort and alternative systems of deterrence/compensation should start from an empirical assessment of how the tort system actually works (and doesn't work), rather than beginning with misleading theoretical claims about the system's optimality.     

THE OPERATIONAL USE OF AN EXPERIENCE TABLE

One objective of the Parole Decision-Making project was the develop ment of experience tables for operational use by the U.S. Board of Parole to aid in individual case deckion-making. This report describes the interaction of parole board members and project staff in the development of an experience table acceptablc to the parole board for operational use. In addition, it describes the development of a research design to test the impact of the presentation of the experience table upon paroling decisions, the implementation of this design, and the initiol evaluation of results.     

A Conception of Moral Rights and Its Application to Property and Welfare Rights*

Abstract
This article deals with the conceptual features and the rational justification of moral rights. For this purpose, the author starts with a common classification of rights, i.e., the distinction between rights in rem and rights in personam . He argues that rights of the first kind can be justified by a two-fold application of the principle of universalizability, while the latter are based on moral rules concerning special social relations, rules which themselves are founded on the principle of universalizability. This distinction, however, does not suffice to cover a further category of rights that play a very important role in social life, namely the rights of community membership, i.e., the particular rights that exist between the members of a social community. These rights cannot be derived from universalizability alone, but, instead, are based on the idea of social justice. This paper provides a short account of the main principles of social justice, and tries to apply them to property and welfare rights.