Our land use control system operates across a variety of multidimensional and dynamic categories. Learning to navigate within and between these categories requires an appreciation for their interconnected, dynamic, and textured components and an awareness of alternative mechanisms for achieving...

Risk regulation is of crucial importance for the functioning of contemporary societies, where risk is ubiquitous. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), nanotechnologies, nuclear power and chemicals are examples of technologies and products that promise great benefits to society, and yet entail...

Federal telecommunications regulations cost consumers as much as $100 billion annually in higher prices and the value of forgone services. The total cost of regulation to consumers and telecommunications firms is as much as $118 billion annually. Regulation and taxation both redistribute wealth,...

Pigou (1920) advocated for taxes, set equal to marginal damages, on goods produced and consumed that involve negative externalities. Samuelson (1954) laid out the conditions for optimal pure public goods provision, but noted that free-riding (the “demand revelation” problem) was likely to...

Banking is risky and prone to failure. Yet banking regulation is surprisingly not all that risk-sensitive in practice. I show that when the bank has an informational advantage over the regulator, designing risk-sensitive banking regulation gives rise to a trade-off: relying on the banking market...

The endemic underuse of radio spectrum constitutes a tragedy of the regulatory commons. Like other common interest tragedies, the outcome results from a legal or market structure that prevents economic actors from executing socially efficient bargains. In wireless markets, innovative...

After the global financial crisis, systemic risk regulation has taken center stage. Many consider hedge funds a potential threat to financial stability. Regulating hedge funds, however, is necessarily a transnational challenge because no national government alone can effectively control the...

Despite decades of research on mechanism design and on many practical aspects of cost-benefit analysis, one of the most basic and ubiquitous features of regulation as actually implemented throughout the world has received little theoretical attention: exemptions for small firms. These firms may...

Given all the talk of regulatory convergence in financial markets, one would think that good data would be available regarding the actual intensity of financial regulation in developed countries as well as a robust literature about how to determine the optimal level of regulatory intensity for...