As the water level drops on Lake Powell, we have a chance to restore both the habitat of Glen Canyon and an earlier approach to public energy provision, when natural resources were shielded from capitalist exploitation and harnessed for the public good.
How the encroachment of private capital into the broadband ecosystem threatens local provision and the goal of universal, affordable broadband.
What role has Law and Economics played in society and in legal scholarship? A Reply to David Bernstein’s recent critique of LPE.
Over the past decade, private financial markets – the domain of venture capital, private equity, and private credit funds – have grown to the point where they now dominate financial activity. This shift has undermined the protections afforded by existing securities laws and, because pensions are one of the largest contributors to these private funds, has subjected ordinary workers to the opaque, unregulated side of financial markets.
Religious liberty challenges to the Affordable Care Act often appear narrowly focused on exempting specific employers from covering particular types of care, such as contraceptives, sterilization, or gender-affirming care. However, closer examination reveals that such claims should be understood as a major new vector in the campaign against social insurance in the United States.
The rapidly worsening home insurance crisis is often understood as primarily a problem for insurers. Yet the overarching policy question should not be, “how do we save the home insurance industry from collapsing?” but rather, “what role should insurance markets play in the broader suite of policies to keep people safely housed?”
Even though gender classifications have been eliminated from most market domains, they stubbornly persist in the insurance context. To understand this puzzling persistence, we must examine the traditions of mutualism that have shaped insurance as a social institution, and how these traditions embed gender in the tools used to price risk.
Insurers are quasi-sovereign actors that can determine the price and terms of economic inclusion. State insurance commissioners have little leverage over insurers that threaten to withdraw coverage when faced with unfavorable regulations. The story of Prop 103 in California suggests that popular mobilization might serve as a counterweight to insurers’ power.
In Florida, insurers increasingly rely on external capital to prepare for the possibility of high loss climate events. Sophisticated financial tools such as insurance-linked securities provide a temporary solution to growing climate risk in coastal regions, but in the long run, they do not address the fundamental causes of the insurability crisis.
Municipal liability insurers have often unrecognized incentives to discourage reforms aimed at reducing police misconduct. For insurers, the predictability of losses is more important than the level of losses. This means that they are likely to oppose democratic reforms that create uncertainty and make it difficult to price the risks of police misconduct.
From the health care we receive to the services our cities provide, private insurers wield significant public power. Over the next few weeks, this symposium will examine the sweet actuarial science and its industries from a law and political economy perspective.
Over the past few decades, universities have become some of the largest employers, real estate holders, health care providers, and even policing agents in cities and towns across the country. How did these educational institutions come to exert such power over their communities? One under-appreciated factor is the monetization of “non-profit” campus land.
The Biden Administration’s recent foray into industrial policy relies heavily on voluntary inducements to push firms to invest in renewable energy technology and domestic manufacturing. Some observers argue that this approach, commonly known as “derisking,” will yield paltry results: firms will pursue the same priorities they would have absent the legislation, just with a better financial return. Yet subsidies do not only alleviate risk; they also impose a new risk of falling behind competitors, and so mold the landscape of profitability into a disciplinary force itself.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission enacted one of the most significant regulations of the Biden years: a comprehensive ban on non-compete clauses. Now the FTC must defend its rule in court.
With the spring submission season nearly in the books, we highlight some of the most exciting forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles. Covering antitrust, legal theory, climate change, religion, disability, labor, consumer protection, criminal law, and so much more, this scouting report is not to be missed.
