Note on land reform in Bangladesh: The efficacy of ceilings

In this note, new data concerning the agrarian structure of Bangladesh are employed to test the efficacy of ceilings on the size of landholdings as a means of making land available to the landless and the near landless. The data confirm that the numbers of potential claimants for land far exceeds the potential supply, even if ceilings on holdings were lowered from 100 standard bighas (331/3 acres) to 25 standard bighas (81/3 acres).     

Negotiating the EU–U.S. Open Aviation Area Agreement 2007 in the Context of Transatlantic Airline Regimes Since 1944

Between 1944 and 2002, the United States sought to create a competitive and commercially driven international civil aviation regime. It tried to peel away politically inspired regulations, which fragmented the marketplace, and deliver efficiencies and consumer benefits. In contrast with the American liberal tradition—albeit with limitations—the industry in Europe was over-regulated and largely based on subsidised state-owned carriers with international market quotas. Thus for many years Europe and the U.S. followed different paths; but political and economic dynamics conspired together in the 1980s and early 1990s to produce remarkable change in the European Community and, by 1997, there were the makings of a competitive and lightly regulated single market, which brought it close to U.S. practice. Since 2002, the United States has been less liberal in its airline policies; the EU has been more liberal. It would be an irony indeed if the great regime liberaliser since 1944 were now to become a force of regulatory conservatism that denied consummation to the vision of a transatlantic open aviation area that could be a magnet to draw in the rest of the world into a truly global commercial airline market.     

The Distinctive Significance of Systemic Risk

This paper suggests that “systemic risk” (e.g., of financial market collapse, or of ecological calamity) has a distinctive kind of moral significance. Two intuitive data points need to be explained. The first is that the systematic imposition of risk can be wrongful or unjust in and of itself, even if harm never ensues. The second is that, even so, there may be no one in particular to blame. We can explain both ideas in terms of what I call responsibilities of “Collective Due Care.” Collective Due Care arguably precludes purely aggregative cost‐benefit decision‐making and requires one kind of “precautionary” attitude in public choice.