Voter‐weighted environmental preferences

This article examines the political economy of preferences with respect to the environment using a new stated preference survey that presents the first benefit values for national water quality levels. The mean valuation greatly exceeds the median value, as the distribution of valuations is highly skewed. The study couples the survey valuations with unique and extensive information on respondent voting patterns. Preferences of registered voters are similar to the preferences of the population at large, but median voters value water quality more than nonvoters. The strongest contrast related to voter‐weighted preferences is among voters for different candidates, as those who voted for Gore in the 2000 presidential election have the highest environmental values. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Presidential oversight: Controlling the regulators

In 1974, President Ford initiated a procedure by which the regulatory policies of federal agencies were subjected to systematic oversight. This activity continued with modest success through subsequent administrations. A substantial stiffening of oversight powers under President Reagan raises basic questions about the best means for performing effective oversight. Proposals for a so-called regulatory budget, within which each agency would be obliged to operate, could expand the oversight authority; but it is too exclusively cost-oriented. A more promising approach is to impose expiration dates on regulations, making them subject to renewal, and to reform the legislative mandates of the regulatory agencies.     

Constructive cigarette regulation

Professor W. Kip Viscusi argues for a move away from the adversarial approach to tobacco regulation, an approach that is currently embodied in class action lawsuits and the proposed broadening of FDA regulatory power over cigarettes. In this Article, he suggests that the FDA should take a constructive role in fostering technological innovations to promote cigarette safety, in much the same way that the government currently fosters safety improvements in motor vehicles and jobs. Professor Viscusi claims that the objective of government policy should be to promote informed consumer risk taking--an approach which recognizes that adult consumers have a right to smoke and to incur the associated risks. He provides survey data demonstrating that although consumers know that smoking is a risky decision, they have little exposure to information regarding the comparative riskiness of various cigarette brands. According to Professor Viscusi, the government should assist in compiling and disseminating information regarding the comparative risks of different smoking options and the effects of certain innovative safety features for cigarettes. Making this information available would enable consumers to make more informed smoking decisions and potentially minimize the health hazards that smoking poses.     

Underpinning success in the real world of corporations law

This paper reports on an action research project which sought to evaluate and guide ongoing teaching and learning development in Principles of Corporations Law, a semester-long unit of study. Typically, enrolments in this subject area include students from a range of cultural contexts for whom the legislative and administrative concepts of the unit are unfamiliar and who also experience significant difficulties with cultural conventions of communication and business practice. At our university, unit enrolments include a high proportion of distance education as well as non-English speaking background (NESB) students, predominantly from China, who have not studied units formerly considered as prerequisite, and many of whom experience difficulties with basic academic skills. As the development team planned and created teaching features to ensure better learning outcomes for these students, it was clear that some truly contextual thinking as well as some practicable solutions would be required. While we had determined in the redesign planning that scenario- or problem-based learning (PBL) with its emphasis on finding, understanding and using information in context, was best suited to help students acquire the skills that underpin success in the unit, our experience in the project indicated students had a broader range of more basic needs. It emerged that students were struggling with fundamental issues that would need to be addressed before real change could occur.     

The Denominator Blindness Effect: Accident Frequencies and the Misjudgment of Recklessness

People seriously misjudge accident risks because they routinelyneglect relevant information about exposure. Such risk judgmentsaffect both personal and public policy decisions (e.g., choiceof a transport mode) but also play a vital role in legal determinations,such as assessments of recklessness. Experimental evidence fora sample of 422 jury-eligible adults indicates that people incorporateinformation on the number of accidents, which is the numeratorof the risk frequency calculation. However, they appear blindto information on exposure, such as the scale of a firm's operations,which is the risk frequency denominator. Hence, the actual observedaccident frequency of accidents/exposure is not influential.     

Holding Collectives Accountable

This article argues that there is a need to understand better the legal origins of collective responsibility, as well as to provide additional material for further judicial interpretation of this form of responsibility. For the purposes of this article, collective responsibility refers to the form of individual criminal responsibility that holds individuals accountable for the criminal purpose or objective of a group where they acted in concert with others or otherwise contributed to the fulfillment of the common criminal plan. To spur on further inquiry into the subject of collective responsibility specifically, this article examines the contribution of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) to the development of this mode of liability and discusses how it is relevant today. In order to provide sufficient background information on this subject matter, this article begins by presenting an overview of the evolution of collective responsibility from Nuremberg to where it stands in practice at the ICC. Finally, the article will demonstrate how the Commission’s diplomatic exchanges in tandem with cases under its supervision contributed to early formation of customary international law and how these historical events are important today.     

Altruistic and private valuations of risk reduction

To remedy the neglect of altruism in benefit assessments for risk regulation programs, this article reports the findings of a new survey of 785 consumers regarding their valuation of two pairs of risks from insecticide. The risk-dollar tradeoffs revealed by consumers averaged $2,080 and $3,680 per injury pair prevented within the household; they were willing to pay $5.01 and $9.06 per 1000 injury pairs prevented in the rest of the state and $1.72 and $2.39 for each 1000 injury pairs avoided elsewhere in the United States. The summed altruistic values for other individuals exceeded the private valuations, which suggests that altruism may be an important benefit component.     

Efficiency criteria for nudges and norms

Public Choice - This article outlines benefit-cost criteria for nudges and behavioral norms for a wide range of policy situations. The principal benefits from well-designed policies usually derive...