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Assessing the Political Approach to Risk Management
Full Document Available in PDF…
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Feel a Heart Attack Coming? Go to France
Imagine that you’ve had a heart attack. Amid the wails of sirens and the flash of red lights, paramedics are rushing to help…
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Tanks on the Roll
Full article available in pdf format. Article originally appeared in the July 8, 1995 edition of the National Journal and was written by…
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VAT Chance for Tax Fairness
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Restricting Trade Will Not Help The Environment
Full Article Available in PDF Format Executive Summary Expanding free trade to include all nations could have beneficial effects…
The Freeman
Risks in the Modern World: What Prospects for Rationality?
Risk refers to the likelihood that something will go wrong.[1] People naturally fear such mishaps, and risk aversion is a basic survival trait.
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Making the Polluters Pay
Environmentalists often call for a world with zero pollution. The response from industry and professional economists is disbelief. Who is right? That depends…
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Learning The Washington Game: Political Strategy And Tactics
Full Chapter Available in PDF Format Executive Summary Those entering the federal government who seek to redirect the system to put greater emphasis on…
The Freeman
Books for Christmas
As a policy wonk, my recommended reading list, not surprisingly, is wonkish. Still, among all those dusty, boring books that make up this body of…
Op-Eds
Good Books For Christmas
Full Article Available in PDF Format Executive Summary Contains brief reviews of Searching For Safety, Essays On Economics And…
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Trading Away Free Trade
Full article is available in PDF (Liberty magazine, November 1994, pp. 22-26). The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has lowered the world’s…
Op-Eds
The Quotable Fred
Full Booklet Available in PDF Format Executive Summary A compendium of quotes from the writings and speeches of CEI president and…
The Freeman
A Sign of the Times
In the normally quiet little Gulf Coast town of Port Bolivar, Texas, federal bureaucrats are threatening to throw an old man in jail because he…
Op-Eds
A Free-Market Environmental Vision
Full Chapter Available in PDF Format Executive Summary There is one environmental vision, and only one, that is compatible…
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Fire in Paradise: The Yellowstone Fires and the Politics of Environmentalism
ON AUGUST 20, 1988–A DAY THAT came to be known as “Black Saturday”–about 160,000 acres were consumed by fires in the greater Yellowstone Park…
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A Fresh Look at Environmental Policy
Environmental journalists are, on the whole, fairly good at producing stories. Unfortunately, these lend to be the stories put forward by the environmental establishment: Large…
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The Market and Nature
(Originally appeared in The Freeman, September 1993) Many environmentalists are dissatisfied with the environmental record of free economies. Capitalism, it is claimed, is…
Op-Eds
Better Living through Government Mandate?
Full article available in pdf format.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Technology—or rather government-favored technology—has gained…
Op-Eds
Better Living Through Government Mandate
Technology—or rather government-favored technology—has gained favor among Washington politicos and activists. Technology, these activists seem to believe, makes it possible to mandate almost anything—recycling,…
The Wall Street Journal
If Grizzly Attacks, Drop Your Gun
Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, we can now add grizzly bears to the list of those who can get away with murder under our criminal…
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Kentucky Hosts Rio Follow-Up…but Frivolity is Pretty Big on the Agenda
Article available in pdf format…
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Kentucky Hosts Rio Follow-Up, But Frivolity is Pretty Big on the Agenda
I eagerly joined more than 1,100 people from forty-nine states gathered in Louisville, Kentucky from May 26-28, 1993. I was a speaker and participant at…
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Acute Government Activism
Click on link above to obtain .pdf of article.
The Wall Street Journal
Acute Government Activism
While President Clinton has taken pains to mimic the rhetorical successes of Ronald Reagan and John E Kennedy, he has actually modeled his presidency in the…
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Don’t Cross these Lines
Please click on .pdf link above to view article.
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Eco-Apartheid: It’s Africans versus Elephants and Environmentalists
Full document available in pdf format.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Developing nations regularly complain that……
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Barriers to Private Insurance
Full Document Available in PDF The American insurance industry is shackled by regulations and restrictions…
Wall Street Journal
Al Gore, Reactionary Environmentalist
Al Gore has written, “When giving us dominion over the earth, did God choose an appropriate technology?” And then: “One is tempted to answer, the…
Op-Eds
Carnival of Dunces
Rio is a beautiful city, shoehorned between steep granite mountains and seemingly infinite sandy beaches where, despite the thinning of the ozone layer, eco-efficient clothing…
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Planning For A Better Environment
Full Article Available in PDF Format Executive Summary For 20 years, environmental policy has been…
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Environmental Policy at the Crossroads
Full Chapter Available in PDF Format Executive Summary It has always been with us, and…
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An Environmental House of Cards
AFTER REPEATEDLY HEARING “read my lips, no new taxes,” it is appropriate to ask whether President Bush’s promise to be green was simply protective coloration.
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Auto Fuel Economy Standards: Good For The Environment? Or A Cause Of Highway Deaths?
Full Policy Brief Available in PDF Format Executive Summary The Corporate Average Fuel Economy Program was part of legislation…
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Deadly Overcaution: FDA’s Drug Approval Process
Full article available in PDF When the federal Food and Drug Administration announces its approval of an important new drug, the…
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The Liberating Benefits of a Safer, Cleaner, and More Mobile Society
Full document available in pdf format.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns…
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The Liberating Benefits Of Automobility
Full Article Available in PDF Format American’s love affair with the automobile has become…
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Environmental Protection: Is there a Better Way
Earth Day 1990-22 April—marks twenty years since the first Earth Day and since the modern environmental movement became a force for politicians to reckon with.
Op-Eds
Let the Market Save Us
Earth Day 1990 promises to be a replay of Earth Day 1970. The message hasn’t changed: Man and markets threaten Mother Earth. There are too…
Wall Street Journal
‘The Ring’ Free Market Classic
During this last week, thousands of Washingtonians have flocked to one of the world’s greatest artistic events, ‘The Ring” by Richard Wagner. Much has…
Op-Eds
Biotechnology Flirts with the Regulators
Biotechnology, like other unfamiliar high tech industries, offers great hopes but arouses even greater fears. Politicians, the record proves, are far more likely to respond to…
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Cap The Financial Black Holes
A consensus is emerging that the rate of U.S. thrift and bank failures stems in large part from the perverse incentives of Federal Deposit…
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The Suicidal Corporation: Two Cheers!
Smith book review for The World and I…
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Is Rent Control’s Lease Over?
In 1921, the Supreme Court issued its finst rent control decision. In a 5-4 opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Court upheld a…
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What’s Wrong With Business Lobbyists
Fred Smith Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, January 16, 1986…
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Rethinking Superfund
Manhattan Report—What are the origins of Superfund? Fred Smith—The Superfund law—the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act—was passed by Congress in 1980 in the…
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An Antitrust Route to Re-regulation
From telecommunications to airlines and railroads, from banking to natural gas, from trucking to broadcasting, partial deregulation has changed the U.S. economic landscape for…
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Taxpayers Tied to the Tracks
Full article available in pdf. In the latest episode of the Perils of Pauline, the villain, (a.k.a., Amtrak—the most heavily subsidized…
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Beyond Superfund
Please click on link above to obtain .pdf of the article. Expansion of the Superfund for toxic-waste cleanup now appears to have been deferred…
The Politics of IMF Lending
The Politics of IMF Lending
Full Document Available in PDF I. Introduction The 1983 debate over increasing the funding of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reflects the…
The Politics of IMF Lending
Watt vs Peterson
Most editorial comment on the running argument between Interior Secretary James G. Watt and Russell W. Peterson, president of the National Audubon Society, totally misses…