Ethical Issues of Bioterror

Bioterrorism has global implications, especially with regard to the use of contagious bio agents or “epidemic generators” with a high potential for causing epidemics. The grave medical implications of a bioterror attack are obvious, but some of the related ethical issues are often overlooked. Moral issues associated with the threat and with the attack may carry long-term consequences, which may shake the rudiments of democratic societies. Some of these efforts may be aided by regulations, laws, and enforcement. The best results will be achieved by a sense of responsibility and understandings of the public.     

The Uneasy Case for Comparative Negligence

This article questions, and in some contexts disproves, thevalidity of the efficiency justifications for the comparativenegligence rule. One argument in the literature suggests thatcomparative negligence is the superior rule in the presenceof court errors. The analysis here shows the analytical flawin this claim and conducts numerical simulations — a formof synthetic "empirical" tests — that prove the potentialsuperiority of other rules. The second argument in the literaturein favor of the comparative negligence rule is based on itsalleged superior ability to deal with private information. Thisarticle develops a general approach to liability rules as mechanismsthat induce self-selection among actors. It then shows thatself-selection can occur, not only under comparative negligence,but also under every other negligence rule. These conclusionsweaken the efficiency explanation for the growing appeal ofthe "division-of-liability" principle within tort law and beyond.     

Governance through global networks and corporate signaling

This article exposes a new form of global governance based on an emergent network of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes. Our study is the first to uncover the network structure of this system, based on a dataset that includes 61 transnational CSR schemes and 31,987 firms. We demonstrate that the network exhibits a significant level of cohesiveness, despite having evolved without any form of hierarchical control. Drawing on a social network analysis, we find a positive correlation among the sustainability performance of the firms, their membership in CSR schemes, and their network characteristics. We show that membership in multiple schemes and the firms’ position in the CSR‐schemes network constitute credible predictors of their sustainability performance, generating a separating equilibrium that distinguishes high from low CSR performers. We develop a model that explains the effectiveness of the CSR‐schemes network based on the synergistic properties of the network and on a distinctive signaling dynamic. Our findings highlight the potential contribution of CSR to the resolution of global governance dilemmas.