Last year was momentous for the international procurement arena, as several of the major multilateral development banks (MDBs) — including the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) — adopted significant changes to their procurement processes and procedures in efforts to increase...

A well-functioning suspension and debarment system can be an effective tool for governments to promote integrity in public procurements, reduce performance risk, and mitigate the likelihood of fraud and corruption. The latest annual report from the US Interagency Suspension and Debarment...

This report examines a legislative weapon that conservative opponents of public safeguards have used with increasing regularity in recent years: anti-regulatory appropriations riders. Opponents of regulation insert these provisions into must-pass appropriations bills to block agencies from using...

In the past few decades, economic analysis of law has been challenged by a growing body of experimental and empirical studies that attest to prevalent and systematic deviations from the assumptions of economic rationality. While these insights were initially perceived as antithetical to standard...

Recently, critics of the administrative state have been urging Congress to reassert itself and rein in regulatory action that they maintain is both undesirable as a matter of policy and in violation of constitutional principles. This anti-regulatory position is unwarranted. While regulatory...

This paper, prepared for a Lincoln Institute conference on "Evolution of Property Rights Related to Land and Natural Resources," and the forthcoming book Property in Land and Other Resources (D.H. Cole and E.Ostrom, eds, forthcoming 2011, Lincoln Institute), argues that, contrary to both the...

The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between tobacco manufacturers and the attorneys general of 46 states substituted a private agreement for the normal processes of regulation and taxation. They dramatically reduced the public's opportunity to participate in both and to hold accountable those...

The promise of biotechnology has been tantalizingly just beyond reach for a number of years. Biotechnology is often touted as a means of increasing agricultural production, improving sustainability, and offering more nutritious food to the public. Promises of increased yield — more food for a...

Law, economics, and public policy scholars have largely neglected government communications. Research on media law and development, as well as considerations of future regulatory frameworks for communications, should recognize that the future might benefit from a much broader and more...

The American regulatory system has no working, systematic process for reviewing regulations for obsolescence or poor performance. Over time, this has facilitated the accumulation a vast stock of regulations. Regulatory accumulation can negatively affect GDP growth, labor productivity,...