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11. Improving the Efficiency of NRC Power Reactor Licensing: The 1957 Mandatory Hearing Reconsidered

Author:
Matt Bowen, Rama T. Ponangi, and Stephen Burns
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Nuclear energy can play a vital role in helping the US—and the globe—meet mid-century climate goals. But any such role for nuclear depends on overcoming the significant if underappreciated challenges posed by the current nuclear licensing process in the US. Put simply, getting a new nuclear project licensed is time-consuming and expensive. This report, part of ongoing research on nuclear energy at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University SIPA focuses on a singular element of the licensing process that has drawn particular scrutiny for the resources it demands: the so-called mandatory hearing. Dating to a 1957 amendment to the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) of 1954, the mandatory hearing was put in place during the early period of nuclear reactor regulation as a way of forcing the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to be more transparent with the public about projects under consideration for development. It was intended to provide an open forum in which the details of reactor project applications were aired publicly and debated. But today, well over half a century since the 1957 amendment to the AEA, there are several compelling reasons to reconsider the mandatory hearing requirement.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Regulation, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

12. Implications of the European Union’s Digital Regulations on U.S. and EU Economic and Strategic Interests

Author:
Kati Suominen
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Abstract:
In recent months, the European Union has adopted several sweeping digital regulations, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), while proposing a number of new measures—including the Data Act, the Artificial Intelligence Act, and the Media Freedom Act. These regulations will shape, likely quite dramatically, the environment for doing digital business in Europe and beyond. They will have profound implications on the leading U.S. digital service providers designated by the European Union as “gatekeepers”—large digital services providers that are expected to adhere to regulatory requirements—as well as these companies’ hundreds of millions of transatlantic European business and individual customers. By impacting primarily U.S. companies instead of Asian or European ones, Europe’s digital policies will also shape U.S. and European global strategic and national security interests. This study will assess the potential implications of new and proposed EU digital acts on U.S. digital service providers, on their customers in Europe and the United States, and on the EU and U.S. economies and exports.
Topic:
European Union, Regulation, Regionalism, Strategic Interests, and Digitalization
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

13. Merger Policy for a Dynamic and Digital Canadian Economy

Author:
Keldon Bester
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
As an element of competition and antitrust law frameworks, merger policy plays an important role in preventing acquisitions that would otherwise allow incumbent firms to extinguish competitive threats and entrench their dominance. But evidence suggests that current approaches to merger law in Canada and abroad have underestimated the harms these transactions can pose to competition and overestimated the effectiveness of the remedies intended to mitigate those harms. Although relevant across the Canadian economy, this permissive treatment of mergers is particularly pronounced in digital markets, where platform business models, the importance of potential competitors and the role of intangible assets such as data as a barrier to entry test the assumptions underlying the country’s merger law. Canada’s current law and jurisprudence mean the Competition Bureau, Canada’s sole competition authority, is limited in its ability to detect potentially harmful transactions, faces material barriers to intervening and fully remedying the harms of those transactions, and is unable to assess the outcome of previous action or inaction. This paper provides recommendations for Canada to ensure its merger law is calibrated for a modern economy.
Topic:
Economics, Regulation, Digital Economy, and Digitalization
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

14. Throwing Down the Gauntlet: What the IMF Can Do About Egypt’s Military Companies

Author:
Yezid Sayigh
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Until recently, both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were wholly reticent to say anything about the involvement of the Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) and other military agencies in Egypt’s civilian economy. This is a longstanding problem. By turning a blind eye to the diversion of resources to the military sector and to the increasingly significant impacts on the economy and public finances, these international financial institutions (IFIs) have undermined the effectiveness of their own programs and allowed their resources to be invested in support of suboptimal policies by the Egyptian government. There is a question of propriety when international assistance allows distorted policy incentives to continue or even intensify and disregards the fact that much of the hype about global growth in the Egyptian economy obscures the very real constraints imposed on private sector development. It is high time to throw down the gauntlet: IFIs and their governmental sponsors should tackle the reality of military involvement systematically in their programs and policy recommendations, and they should confront the issue head on in their dealings with Egypt’s authorities. Reticence persists but is starting to dissipate. A report released by the World Bank in December 2020 noted that military agencies account for an appreciable proportion of all state-owned enterprises producing capital goods; consumer durables and apparel; materials; food, beverages, and tobacco; automobiles and components; retailing; media and entertainment; semiconductors and intelligent transportation system equipment; and technology hardware and equipment.1 The IMF went further in a July 2021 review of its loan agreement with Egypt, in which it referred to the presence and role of Egyptian military companies for the first time ever.2 Significantly, it included them explicitly in its assessment of state-owned enterprises in general—many of which, the report noted, are “registering weak financial performance while some are benefiting from an uneven playing field”—and implied that military companies should come under the same broad reform policies that the IMF proposes for the public sector as a whole. Now that the IMF, in particular, has broken its former silence, it should refine its approach so as to tackle the Egyptian military’s economic role in a more targeted and consistent manner—hence making its approach more effective and sustainable. This requires a mix of measures. The first set involves bringing military agencies and companies within the scope of recommendations proposed by the IMF for Egypt’s civilian public sector and state-owned enterprises as a whole. These first measures therefore engage with IMF recommendations and Egyptian government policy initiatives relating to broad questions of ownership, regulation, and financing strategy. The second set of measures tackles the specific aspects of the legal, regulatory, and judicial frameworks that enable the military’s activities in the civilian domain. Unless they are revised, these enabling frameworks will impede wider reforms, but the Egyptian government and IMF have, for the most part, neither reviewed nor addressed them to date.
Topic:
Regulation, Economy, Business, IMF, Civil-Military Relations, and Military
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, and Egypt

15. The Regulatory Costs of Being Public

Author:
Michael Ewens, Kairong Xiao, and Ting Xu
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
An important explanation for the significant decline in the number of publicly listed companies in the United States is the increased burden of disclosure and governance regulations. Indeed, practitioners often point to heightened regulatory costs as the culprit of the disappearing public firms, while major deregulations such as the 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act were directly motivated by perceived costs of being public. Thus, understanding the role of regulations in the cost of being public and the decline in the number of public firms can address concerns about possible capital market dysfunction.
Topic:
Markets, Governance, Regulation, and Business
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

16. State Regulatory Compliance Processes: Lessons Learned From COVID-19

Author:
Neil Kerwin, Aretha Ferrell-Benavides, Stan Meiburg, Shelley Metzenbaum, and Courtney Phillips
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA)
Abstract:
Over the past 18 months, the nation’s economy and society have been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. To protect public health while minimizing economic disruption, state and local governments took action to improve the regulatory compliance process, such as: Utilized additional online mechanisms for some regulatory compliance processes; Addressed business pain points and concerns about timeliness; and Improved sequencing and routing of regulatory approvals (for example, by allowing offices to do concurrent reviews) Supported by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Academy's Center for Intergovernmental Partnerships analyzed states' actions related to their regulatory standards. The report discovered several main steps state governments took regarding: Simplified permitting paved the way for business start-ups; New permissions allowed bars and restaurants to resume operations; Streamlined licensing allowed healthcare professionals to continue to practice; and The authorization of telehealth allowed millions of people to receive remote healthcare services. The report noted several important implications along these investigative lines and detailed additional opportunities for research into lessons learned and preparations for future crises. See Chapter 5 of the report to read the complete conclusions and recommendations.
Topic:
Regulation, Public Health, COVID-19, Compliance, and Public Administration
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

17. Barber Licensing in Arkansas: Public Health or Private Gain?

Author:
Tanner Corley and Marcus M. Witcher
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In Arkansas, the barber profession has been regulated and licensed for more than 80 years, and until recently, the issue was mostly absent from the political debate. During a regular session of Arkansas’s 92nd General Assembly in 2019, however, state Sen. John Cooper presented a bill to “repeal the [1937] Arkansas Barber Law” and to “abolish the State Board of Barber Examiners” (Briggs 2019). The average Arkansan probably was not aware of the bill, but occupational licensing reformers saw this as a great opportunity for Arkansas to pave the way for other states to reform their own license laws. If Cooper’s bill had passed, Arkansas’s economy would have likely benefited (Timmons and Thornton 2010, 2018). By removing restrictive requirements to becoming a barber, the bill would have allowed more Arkansans to enter the profession. This reform would have ­provided people with more economic opportunities, increased competition, and benefited consumers.
Topic:
Regulation, Business, Public Health, and Licensing
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

18. Supply Chain Regulation in the Service of Geopolitics: What’s Happening in Semiconductors?

Author:
Dieter Ernst
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
Abstract:
Supply chain regulation can be a formidable tool to protect a country’s resilience against unexpected disruptions of trade, investment and the supply of skilled labour. Its utility, however, may erode when geopolitics rather than economics becomes the primary objective. This paper examines the implementation problems and the unintended consequences of a new supply chain doctrine in the service of geopolitics, with a focus on US President Joe Biden’s Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains to protect US technological leadership and national security against China. With semiconductors as a primary target, America’s supply chain controls are designed to exploit China’s most glaring weaknesses as supply chain chokepoints that the US Commerce Department can block, thus impeding timely and cost-effective access to essential products, services and technologies. The paper also highlights a second defining characteristic of America’s supply chain doctrine — regulatory supply chain controls are combined with a big push in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Three propositions are presented as guideposts for further research. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications for future US supply chain control against China: Will the quest for improved supply chain resilience succeed in mobilizing enough forces to shift the focus of US policy away from supply chain regulation in the service of geopolitics?
Topic:
International Cooperation, Labor Issues, Regulation, Rivalry, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

19. How the rest of the world responds to the US-China split

Author:
Hung Tran
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The election of Joe Biden as the forty-sixth US president is not expected to change the list of substantive issues dividing the United States and China, such as trade, investment, technology, geopolitical competition, national security, and human rights—except that the priority among them may change, with human rights concerns moving more to the forefront. However, the tone and modality of the unfolding of the US-China competition will change from Donald Trump’s unilateralism to Biden’s efforts to build alliances with “likeminded” countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere to deal with the challenges China has posed. In a way, Biden’s alliance-building approach may intensify pressure on the rest of the world to take sides. How countries respond to this challenge, unwelcome by most, depends on whether they see themselves as competitors to China, or as “price takers” in the international economic system.
Topic:
Global Markets, Regulation, Finance, Economy, Trade, and Digital Policy
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, North America, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

20. Common‐​Sense Policy Reforms for California Housing

Author:
Lee E. Ohanian
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
California housing has become unaffordable. As of February 2021, the median California home price was nearly $700,000 and the median condominium price was $515,000. The median rent for the same month was $1,733. Based on industry mortgage financing and renting standards, this means that both homebuyers and renters require household incomes of nearly $100,000 to qualify for housing.
Topic:
History, Reform, Regulation, and Housing
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America