Facilitating state policy experimentation is an oft-cited justification for the U.S. federalism system. Despite growing recognition of risk aversion, free riding, and other disincentives to state-led experimentation, the mythology of state laboratories still dominates these accounts. We propose...

Since its introduction in 1967, the account of property rights formation by Harold Demsetz has pervaded the legal and economic literature. Demsetz theorized that as a once-abundant, commonly-shared resource becomes more valuable and sought-after, users will move to more clearly define property...

In recent years, the federal government's efforts to open up competitive electricity markets have transformed how we think about the regulation of energy. In many respects, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) broad “deregulatory” efforts, which commenced in the 1990s, might...

Oil and gas development involves many configurations of property rights and regulations that exhibit certain characteristics of Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons and William Buzbee's regulatory commons. Numerous mineral owners have rights to drain oil and gas from shared underground...

America has a long history of oil and gas extraction, but a relatively new extraction technique called slickwater hydraulic fracturing has captured the attention of the public, academics, agencies, and politicians. The newly-revived focus on domestic oil and gas — and particularly on...

The United States is in the midst of a boom in natural gas and oil production, much of which has occurred in shale formations around the country. As shale development has expanded — largely as a result of new horizontal drilling and “slickwater” hydraulic fracturing (fracking, fracing, or...

Renewable energy development has recently expanded in the United States, but the law has failed to keep pace with this expansion. Law perennially chases human needs, and in some respects, this is good. When law develops in response to change, it accounts for the real needs of those who work...

Energy drives economies and quality of life, yet accessible traditional fuels are increasingly scarce. Federal, state, and local governments have thus determined that renewable energy development is essential and have passed substantial requirements for its use. These lofty goals will fail,...

As the hunt for important unconventional gas resources in America expands, an increasingly popular method of wringing resources from stubborn underground formations is a process called hydraulic fracturing – also described as hydrofracturing, fracking, or fracing – wherein fluids are pumped...