LPE Blog

Symposium

Equity in Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis

By Zachary Liscow

Standard cost-benefit analysis exacerbates inequality by assigning greater weight to benefits that accrue to the rich. But it need not. Here are three strategies for bringing concerns about distribution within the CBA framework.

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: October 1, 2021

By LPE Editors

Frank Pasquale introduces a symposium on the future of cost-benefit analysis, Lisa Heinzerling explains how cost-benefit analysis limits ambitious action on climate change and racial justice, and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad discusses the institutional racism of municipal bonds.

Symposium

Living in a Capitalist City With No Capital

By Dedrick Asante‑Muhammad

Elite white capital created housing for middle-class whites built by working-class whites. Nowhere in this process, nor in the profit of lending, the employment of housing construction, or the long-term appreciation of white homeownership, was there a meaningful place for African Americans to bridge racial economic inequality.

Symposium

Climate Change, Racial Justice, and Cost-Benefit Analysis

By Lisa Heinzerling

Two entrenched features of cost-benefit analysis ensure that the benefits of regulatory measures addressing climate change and racial injustice will be diminished and deformed in the process of valuing them: discounting and monetary valuation.

Symposium

Cost-Benefit Analysis at a Crossroads: A Symposium on the Future of Quantitative Policy Evaluation

By Frank Pasquale

Introducing an LPE symposium on the promise, the perils, and the possible future of cost-benefit analysis.

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 24, 2021

By LPE Editors

A possible silver lining in the TransUnion decision, the role of early corporations in economic thought, and the continued racism of municipal bond ratings.

Symposium

The Same System, the Same Results

By Brittany Alston

Every year, governments and public entities wrestle with tough decisions about how they will fund their communities, and every year we absolve Wall Street of its role in siphoning money away from our public budgets. Enough is enough.

Essay

When the Moral Economy Became a Political Economy

By Emily Erikson

History shows that the standards by which societies judge economic activity change over time. As these moral frameworks evolve—or devolve—many of the changes make their way into law. For example, modern anti-trust law is grounded in the widely accepted belief that monopolies depress competition and growth and encourage unscrupulous behavior. However, in. . .

Essay

TransUnion Is a Double-Edged Sword: Should the Legal Left Wield It?

By Christopher Morten

The logic of the Court’s recent TransUnion decision should make it harder, perhaps impossible, for corporations to enforce various forms of so-called “intellectual property” against competitors and the public. Could and should the legal left wield TransUnion for our own purposes?

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 17, 2021

By LPE Editors

Allocating resilience, a new vision of corporate law, and how to turn public debt into a public good.

Symposium

Making Public Debt a Public Good

By Abbye Atkinson

Dependence on public debt is a hallmark of democratic capitalist governance. How, then, can we ensure that the interests of private investors do not overtake the needs of the people that debt is meant to serve?

Symposium

Beyond Neoliberalism: Allocating Resilience through Corporate Law

By Ronit Donyets-Kedar, Ofer Sitbon

Replacing the liberal subject with the vulnerable one, and the responsive state with the restrained one, exposes the ways in which current corporate jurisprudence is blind to the allocation of resilience in society. Introducing vulnerability theory to corporate law may therefore help to ensure that all stakeholders have equal access to the corporation’s resources. . .

Symposium

Resilience Drainage and the Role of Private Law

By Hila Keren

The laws that apply to market activities have long catered to the interests of seasoned market actors. Who, then, is to watch out for us lay market users?

Weekly Roundup

Weekly Roundup: September 10, 2021

By LPE Editors

Introducing vulnerability theory, Martha McCluskey on the mythical ideal of the autonomous subject, and Brian Highsmith on the curse of fiscal federalism.

Symposium

The Bondholders’ Veto: Fiscal Federalism and Local Democracy

By Brian Highsmith

American cities’ reliance on municipal debt must be understood as part of a larger structural reliance on concentrated, mobile capital.

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