We analyze the consequences of activism in a regulated industry where the regulator has been captured by the industry. Unlike ordinary economic agents, activists are insensitive to monetary incentives. Moreover, they are less well informed than regulators and their actions generate dead-weight...

Activist NGOs increasingly oppose industrial projects that have nevertheless been approved by public regulators. To understand this recent rise in NGO activism, we develop a theory of optimal regulation in which a regulated industry seeks to undertake a project that may be harmful to society. On...

Activist NGOs increasingly oppose industrial projects that were approved by public regulators. We develop a model that explains this phenomenon. We consider a potentially-harmful industrial project that is subject to regulatory approval. The regulator can be influenced by the industry, and may...

Dieser Beitrag skizziert das ordonomische Forschungsprogramm einer ökonomischen Theorie der Moral und stellt die Grundzüge einer mit dieser Methode arbeitenden Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik vor: Die Ordonomik versteht sich als eine rationalchoice- basierte Analyse der Interdependenz von...

We analyze the consequences of activism in a regulated industry where the regulator has been captured by the industry. Unlike ordinary economic agents, activists are insensitive to monetary incentives. Moreover, they are less well informed than regulators and their actions generate dead-weight...

We investigate whether laws restricting fiscal policies across U.S. states lead politicians to adopt more partisan regulatory policy instead. We first show that partisan policy outcomes do exist across U.S. states, with Republicans cutting taxes and spending and Democrats raising them. We then...

In diverse areas – from retirement savings, to fuel economy, to prescription drugs, to consumer credit, to food and beverage consumption – government makes personal decisions for us or helps us make what it sees as better decisions. In other words, government serves as our agent. Understood...

We discuss a government's incentives to delegate regulation to bureaucrats. The government faces a trade-off in its delegation decision: bureaucrats have knowledge of the firms in the industry that the government does not have, but at the same time, they have other preferences than the...

“We are all socialists now,” Newsweek magazine declared some months ago. And with Republican stalwarts George Bush, Chris Cox, and Alan Greenspan respectively presiding over two of the largest expansions in federal programs since the New Deal, confessing to the failures of self-regulation,...