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Myths and Facts in Radiation Risks
Introduction Nuclear power is probably the only known energy source that can support the world’s growing energy needs while simultaneously reducing global carbon dioxide emissions.1…
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Don’t Depower Crypto
Introduction In President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 budget blueprint,1 the president proposed a new tax aimed at the electricity use caused by cryptocurrency mining. Known…
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A Global Antitrust Paradox?
Executive summary In today’s Washington, bipartisan consensus is rare. But at least two points of consensus remain. The first is that America’s defining geopolitical challenge…
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A Free Market Solution for Drug Distribution
Executive summary This paper describes and explains the function of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) in the American health care economy. PBMs are private businesses that…
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The Forgotten History of the Wagner Act
Introduction President Joe Biden on April 26, 2021, announced the creation of a special Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. The purpose of the…
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Constitutional Restoration: How to rebuild the separation of powers
Introduction A specter is haunting America—the specter of unlimited government. A central feature of our Constitution is that it restricts the federal government’s powers. These…
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Five Myths of Civil Forfeiture
Executive Summary Every year, federal, state, and local government agents take—and permanently keep—billions of dollars of Americans’ property through civil forfeiture. The practice of civil…
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Turning Back the Clock: Structural Presumptions in Merger Analyses and Revised Merger Guidelines
Introduction Since 1950, when Congress closed a loophole in Section 7 of the Clayton Act,[1] the federal antitrust agencies have investigated actively, and prosecuted diligently, mergers the government…
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A Market Approach to Regulating Stablecoins, the Future’s Money
Executive Summary The cryptocurrency sector experienced its most successful year to date in 2021. Familiar digital assets Bitcoin and Ethereum hit record values, as the…
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The Case for Letting Crises Go to Waste
Executive Summary An Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act to reaffirm boundaries of politicians and the legislation they can pass has become necessary to the survival of limited…
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Five Myths of Civil Forfeiture
Executive Summary Every year, federal, state, and local government agents take—and permanently keep—billions of dollars of Americans’ property through civil forfeiture. The practice of civil…
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Don’t Confuse the Platform with the Train
Executive Summary Should social media companies be regulated like common carriers? To answer that question, this paper describes the functions and origins of social media…
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The State Antitrust Paradox
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY American antitrust law is the bedrock of competition policy in the United States. It has also proven among the most intellectually challenging areas…
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Central Bank Digital Currencies Threaten Global Stability and Financial Privacy
Executive Summary As digital currencies go mainstream around the world, governments and international financial bodies are seeking to develop ways to regulate them. Some countries…
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“They’re Taking My Stuff!”
What You Need to Know about Seizure and Forfeiture…
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Would More Electric Vehicles Be Good for the Environment?
Executive Summary The environmental advantages of electric vehicles (EVs) over internal combustion engine-powered vehicles are as obvious as the lack of a tailpipe emitting air…
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European Union Antitrust Policy in the Digital Era
The European Commission wants Google to become less connected, the German government wants Facebook to use less data, and the French government wants to promote…
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Science May Be the Easy Part
The COVID-19 pandemic has already infected more than 7 million Americans, claiming over 200,000 lives in the U.S. Since the disease is caused by a…
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The Double Standards of Cannabis and Nicotine
View Full Document as PDF Executive Summary The principal benefit of recreational cannabis, as the name implies, is recreation. Many who enjoy using…
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Terrible Tech 2.0
View Full Document as PDF Executive Summary If you are looking for bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., the technology policy sector may be your…
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America Last
The Jones Act requires any ship traveling between two U.S. points to be U.S.-manufactured, -owned, -flagged, and -crewed. This heavy-handed protectionist measure was enacted in 1920…
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Perverse Psychology
Cigarette smoking is a lethal habit that kills approximately half of those who sustain it over their lifetime. But, contrary to popular belief, the nicotine…
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The Case against Social Media Content Regulation
As repeatedly noted by most defenders of free speech, expressing popular opinions never needs protection. Rather, it is the commitment to protecting dissident expression that…
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The Scientific Case for Vacating the EPA’s Carbon Dioxide Endangerment Finding
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009 “Endangerment Finding” from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases grants the agency a legal mandate that can…
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How Federal Policy Puts Eating Disorder Sufferers at Risk
Around 8 million Americans suffer from clinically significant eating disorders that drive them to develop and maintain unhealthy, and sometimes fatal, eating habits. The American…
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Federally Funded Children’s Environmental Health Centers Do Little to Promote Public Health
October is Children’s Health Month, a time when official federal agencies call attention to important efforts and policies designed to advance childhood health and safety.
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Democratic Capitalism: Why Political and Economic Freedom Need Each Other
Is capitalism destroying democracy? It is an old question that political thinkers have long wrestled with.
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Selling Your Data without Selling Your Soul
Humans have always sought to defend a zone of privacy around themselves—to protect their personal information, their intimate actions and relationships, and their thoughts and…
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Minimum Wages Have Tradeoffs
Raising the minimum wage is currently a top policy issue at the federal, state, and local levels. This paper opposes increases for three reasons, and…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2019 Edition
Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such as Waymo (its parent company, Alphabet, also owns…
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The Case against Antitrust Law
Politicians and pundits across the ideological spectrum often call for greater competition in the marketplace. While their favored means vary widely, the view that current…
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Fear Profiteers
The rise of a vibrant market for e-cigarettes has been a blessing for many smokers. After many failed attempts to quit, e-cigarettes provide an exciting…
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Traders of the Lost Ark
View Full Document as PDF With contributions by Fred L. Smith Jr., Marc Scribner, Daniel Press, and Ryan Khurana Profiles in Capitalism August…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2018 Edition
Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such as Waymo.[1] The prospect of…
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The New National ID Systems
View Full Document as PDF The past few years have seen growing awareness and concern about U.S. government surveillance of the American…
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The Case against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The CFPB was meant to protect American pocketbooks and property. But the unconstitutionally structured agency is harmful to consumers.
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What’s the Difference between “Major,” “Significant,” and all those other Federal Rule Categories?
View Full Document as PDF Bureaucracy, rather than interaction with elected representatives, dominates the relationship of the individual to the government. The…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2017 Edition
View Full Document as PDF Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such…
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The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Climate Treaty
Failure to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty would entrench a constitutionally damaging precedent, set President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in conflict, and ensure…
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A Case for Property Rights in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
View Full Document as PDF The air that surrounds us may appear empty, but it is full of information that travels across…
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Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness
With regulatory dark matter, there are tens of thousands of documents that agencies can use to circumvent Congress, allowing the federal government to inject itself into…
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Pirates at the Parchment Gates
View Full Document as PDF In recent years, state attorneys general (AGs), have partnered with private lawyers working on a contingency fee…
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Resale Pricing in the Contact Lens Industry
View Full Document as PDF More than 30 million Americans wear contact lenses. In recent years, contact lens technology has improved, offering…
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Shaking up the Conventional Wisdom on Salt
View Full Document as PDF The notion that if you eat too much salt you will have high blood pressure has been…
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The Morality and Virtues of Capitalism and the Firm
View Full Document as PDF The case for the morality of capitalism lies in its voluntary nature and its synthesis of self-interest…
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Punching the Clock on a Smartphone App?
View Full Document as PDF Should your boss tell you how to vote? To even ask the question is absurd today, but…
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Cutting the Gordian Knot
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The EPA’s Dereliction of Duty
The agency's failure to meet its own deadlines demands more Congressional oversight.
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning
View Document as PDF Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such as…
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The Rising Tide
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People, Not Ratios
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Game Changer
Rather than enforcing subjective morality or trying to protect people from themselves, modern gambling regulation should treat citizens as adults and preserve the right of states…
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Fanning the Flames
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Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness
Wayne Crews writes a preliminary inventory of “Regulatory Dark Matter.”…
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Reviving Capitalism
The near-death and rebirth of American railroads is a case study in business leaders fending off regulation.
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Virtuous Capitalism
Is there less corruption in business than we think?…
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Real Goals to Empower the Developing World
The United Nations is soon due to replace its ambitious Millennium Development Goals with a new set of far more extensive and even more ambitious…
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The Nation’s Worst State Attorneys General 2015
From noteworthy ethical and legal breaches, including violating the Constitution, fabricating legal norms, usurping legislative powers, hiring campaign contributors as outside counsel on a contingency-fee…
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A Bird in the Hand and No Banks in the Bush
Full Document Available in PDF Radio Shack. Borders Books and Music. Blockbuster Video. Eastman Kodak. These are the names of…
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The NLRB Joint-Employer Cases
Designating companies with certain business models as “joint employers”, including many restaurants, gas stations, day care providers, cleaning services, auto repair shops, hotels, and more,…
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“Beepocalypse” Not
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Operation Choke Point
Can the government shut down legal but politically disfavored businesses? If an ongoing federal regulatory campaign continues, that may be precisely what happens.
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The Unintended Consequences of Collective Bargaining
With high levels of unionization and no right-to-work laws, union presence has cost individuals more than $10,000 in income over the last 50 years…
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An Interstate Analysis of Right to Work Laws
There is compelling evidence suggesting a substantial, significant, and positive relationship between economic growth in a state and the presence of a right to work laws. This paper…
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Understanding Public Pension Debt
Today, many states face budget crunches due to massive pension debts that have accumulated over the past two decades, often in the billions of dollars. State…
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A Consumer’s Guide to Chemical Risk
A constant barrage of news headlines suggests that synthetic chemicals—even some naturally occurring ones—are responsible for nearly every public health problem imaginable, sowing fear and…
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Slow Train Coming?
After a century of severe regulation nearly brought the United States railroad industry to ruin, policy makers in the 1970s began a process that ultimately…
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Rachel Was Wrong
As the world reexamines Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide legacy, this paper focuses on the importance of chemicals designed for crop production. Unfortunately, the benefits of these…
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Is There a Future for Generic Biotech Crops?
Farmers are eagerly awaiting the expiration of the patents on popular biotech traits over the coming few years. Unfortunately, a quirk in the way biotech…
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The Case for Abolishing the Economic Development Administration
EDA investments do little more than shift resources from one area of the country or the economy to another. EDA’s funding should be immediately revoked,…
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All Pain and No Gain
The MACT Rule supposedly reduces risk to unborn children by lowering methylmercury concentrations in non-commercial fish. But the EPA provides no empirical evidence that any…
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Fixing America’s Crumbling Underground Water Infrastructure
Opening municipal procurement processes to fair competition can help ensure Americans access to clean, reliable, and affordable water in their homes, schools, and businesses for…
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Homesteading the Final Frontier
A proposed law requiring the United States to recognize land claims off planet under specified conditions offers the possibility of legal, tradable land titles, allowing…
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The Real Meaning of “TSCA Modernization”
Modernizing the Toxic Substances Control Act, the federal law that regulates chemicals, could lead to bans on many valuable products, thereby undermining innovation and diverting…
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The Report on Carcinogens
There is nothing wrong in principle with publishing periodic reports identifying substances that pose carcinogenic risks to humans. But it would be a mistake to…
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Green Chemistry’s March of the Ostriches
Popular myths about man-made chemicals cause lawmakers to bury their heads in the sand and support restrictive regulations that do not realistically address risks to…
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The True Story of Cosmetics
Many environmental groups want to rid the world of synthetic chemicals. Now they are at war with your makeup.
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Stifling Medical Device Innovation
The United States has long been the home to cutting-edge innovations in the medical device industry. However, increasingly burdensome regulatory policy is driving pioneering research…
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The Other National Debt Crisis
Runaway federal regulation represents the biggest threat to our economy today. To address the problem, lawmakers first need to define it and quantify its costs.
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Rethinking Federalism
Federal preemption of state law is a huge topic, with battles ongoing over the wisdom of preemption at the Federal Communications Commission and in the…
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Freedom of Information vs Right to Privacy
The free movement of information throughout the economy and in government benefits Arizonans as citizens and consumers. At the same time, the right to privacy…
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A CARE-less Rush to Regulate Alcohol
Wine, beer, and spirit wholesalers have a long history of employing state laws to secure a guaranteed slice of the market. Recent court cases have…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2011
President Barack Obama’s new federal budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2012 seeks $3.729 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending. In the previous fiscal…
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Class Conflict
Gainful Employment Proposal Penalizes At-Risk Student Populations and Hurts the Economy…
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The Limitations of Public-Private Partnerships
Government at all levels in the United States has been slowly moving away from grand central planning schemes and toward markets. One result has been…
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H-1B Visas: A Case for Open Immigration of Highly Skilled Foreign Workers
To bring workers they need into the United States, American companies sponsor their H1-B work visas. The rapid pace of technological and scientific development is…
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Joint Letter to DOE on Transferable Credits
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BONG HiTS 4 JESUS: The First Amendment Takes a Hit
Full Document Available in PDF…
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The Nation’s Worst State Attorneys General
Like other government offices, state attorney general offices were designed to have limited powers, set forth by their respective state constitutions and statutes. Unfortunately, many…
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Florida’s Reedy Creek Improvement District
Could private government help fix Florida's property insurance system?…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2010
Full Document Available in PDF President Barack Obama’s federal budget for fiscal year (FY) 2011 proposes $3.83 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and…
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Shackling Innovation
The Regulation of Industry-Supported Clinical Trials…
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Payment Card Networks Under Assault
How Capping Interchange Fees Will Hurt Consumers, Charities, Community Banks, and Credit Unions…
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Political Malpractice
Most Americans agree that our health care system is broken. But it is increasingly clear that what ails health care is not too little, but…
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Hurricane Damage and Global Warming
How bad could it get and what can we do about it today?…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2009
Wayne Crews' annual accounting of the hidden taxes of regulation.
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Property and Casualty Insurance 2009 Report Card
Full Document Available in PDF For the second year in a row,…
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The Case for Compensating Live Organ Donors
Full Document Available in PDF Conflicting opinions on the ethics of organ…
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Pharmaceutical Evolution
Albert I. Wertheimer and Thomas M. Santella explain the advantages of incremental innovation in drug development. Photo: CC <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/joethorn/86495698/">Joe Thorn</a>.
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Bottled Water and the Overflowing Nanny State
In her study Angela Logomasini's analyzes how misinformation about bottled water erodes consumer freedom…