Does a State's regulatory scheme that permits in-state wineries directly to ship alcohol to consumers but restricts the ability of out-of-state wineries to do so violate the dormant Commerce Clause in light of Sec. 2 of the Twenty-first Amendment?

This paper provides an economic analysis of the residential real estate brokerage industry. We find that the traditional model for residential real estate brokerage services may be dated, and could be improved substantially with some public policy interventions that spur innovation.We believe...

This paper reviews the US and European experiences with regulatory oversight and the use of formal tools to analyze regulation. We conclude that the US and Europe have made some progress in improving regulatory analysis and oversight, but they can do much more. We offer six recommendations for...

Network neutrality issues have been vigorously debated worldwide over the past few years. One major aim of network neutrality proponents is to prevent high-speed Internet service providers from charging content providers for priority delivery. Recently, proponents have turned their attention to...

Network neutrality is a policy proposal that would regulate how network providers manage and price the use of their networks. Congress has introduced several bills on network neutrality. Proposed legislation generally would mandate that Internet service providers exercise no control over the...

After two years of litigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the 19 states suing Microsoft have proposed draconian remedies (Plaintiffs Proposed Final Judgment 2000, hereafter, PPFJ) to address the violations of the Sherman Act found by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson (Conclusions of Law...

Mobile phone usage while driving is increasing throughout the world. In this paper, we use survey data from 7,268 U.S. drivers to estimate the relationship between mobile phone use while driving and accidents. We hypothesize that drivers who use mobile phones while driving may be more likely to...

Governments throughout the world are requiring greater use of economic analysis as a way of informing key policy decisions. The European Union now requires that an impact assessment be done for all major policy initiatives. An evaluation of the EU system could provide lessons for the U.S. and...

A quarter century ago, there was a very influential paper that shaped thinking on how best to design what we now call the Internet. The article offered a design principle called "end-to-end." The idea was to keep the inner part of a computer network as simple as possible and allow the...

This essay examines the economics of "net neutrality" and broadband Internet access. We argue that mandating net neutrality would be likely to reduce economic welfare. Instead, the government should focus on creating competition in the broadband market by liberalizing more spectrum and reducing...