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Privacy Cost-Benefit Analysis
As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a strong effort to regulate the use of information on the web in the name of “privacy.” The basic tradeoff that drives the web is that firms use information...
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Type I errors in action, Google edition
Does anyone really still believe that the threat of antitrust enforcement doesn’t lead to undesirable caution on the part of potential defendants? Whatever you may think of the merits of the Google/ITA...
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Medical Devices
The GAO has recently issued a report on medical devices. The thrust of the report is that “high-risk” medical devices do not receive enough scrutiny from the FDA and that recalls are not handled well....
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Natural Disasters and Payday Lending
There has been plenty of Hurricane Irene blogging, and some posts linking natural disasters to various aspects of law and policy (see, e.g. my colleague Ilya Somin discussing property rights and...
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My Reflections on The Senate CFPB Hearing
[Cross-posted at PYMNTS.COM] Richard Cordray’s nomination hearing provided an opportunity to learn something new about the substantive policies of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau....
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SEC Organizational Reform Hearing
The semester is off to a bang. I arrived at Stanford Monday to start teaching in the Law School and begin a research fellowship at the Hoover Institution. Yesterday I hiked in the mountains...
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Josh Wright begins making his mark at the FTC by pushing cost-benefit analysis
Although it probably flew under almost everyone’s radar, last week Josh issued his first Concurring Statement as an FTC Commissioner. The statement came in response to a seemingly arcane Notice of...
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The SHIELD Act: When Bad Economic Studies Make Bad Laws
Earlier this month, Representatives Peter DeFazio and Jason Chaffetz picked up the gauntlet from President Obama’s comments on February 14 at a Google-sponsored Internet Q&A on Google+ that “our...
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Commissioner Wright goes down swinging over amendments to the FTC’s HSR rules
Last week, over Commissioner Wright’s dissent, the FTC approved amendments to its HSR rules (final text here) that, as Josh summarizes in his dissent, establish, among other things, a procedure for the...
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Appropriate humility from Verizon over corporations’ role in stopping NSA...
Like most libertarians I’m concerned about government abuse of power. Certainly the secrecy and seeming reach of the NSA’s information gathering programs is worrying. But we can’t and shouldn’t pretend...
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Murray L. Weidenbaum, R.I.P.
The world of economics and public policy has lost yet another giant. Joining Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, Armen Alchian, and Robert Bork is a man whose name may be less familiar to TOTM readers but...
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Permissionless innovation does not mean “no contracts required”
UPDATE: I’ve been reliably informed that Vint Cerf coined the term “permissionless innovation,” and, thus, that he did so with the sorts of private impediments discussed below in mind rather than...
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Joshua Wright, Martin Gaynor and Past FTC Officials to Speak at ICLE Event on...
The Federal Trade Commission’s recent enforcement actions against Amazon and Apple raise important questions about the FTC’s consumer protection practices, especially its use of economics. How does the...
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Reforming FTC Data Security Enforcement
Recently I highlighted problems with the FTC’s enforcement actions targeting companies’ data security protection policies, and recommended that the FTC adopt a cost-benefit approach to regulation in...
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Time for the FTC to Reform its Advertising Substantiation Program
In my just published Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum, I argue that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should substantially scale back its overly aggressive “advertising substantiation”...
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Transatlantic Trade Negotiations: Keeping Regulation in Check
Last week, the George Washington University Center for Regulatory Studies convened a Conference (GW Conference) on the Status of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Negotiations...
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D.C. Circuit POM Wonderful Decision Begins to Rein in Excessive FTC...
In a previous Truth on the Market blog posting, I noted that the FTC recently revised its “advertising substantiation” policy in a highly problematic manner. In particular, in a number of recent...
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Innovation Death Panels and Other Economic Shortcomings of the White House...
The Internet ecosphere relies on data. Information about browsing, purchases and Internet history (among other things) can be very useful for companies that want to reach consumers efficiently. In...
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One Step Forward: The Supremes Add Some Bite to Environmental Cost-Benefit...
Today, in Michigan v. EPA, a five-Justice Supreme Court majority (Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, with Thomas...
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The OECD Provides Further Guidance on Assessing the Anticompetitive Impact of...
The most welfare-inimical restrictions on competition stem from governmental action, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s newly promulgated “Competition Assessment Toolkit,...
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