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31. Land Title Insurance in India: Lessons from U.S. Regulatory Approaches

Author:
Anirudh Burman
Publication Date:
08-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
India’s insurance market for land titles is still in the early stages of development. Borrowing from the U.S. model, here’s what Indian insurers and officials alike can do to keep the market flourishing and protect consumers. The poor quality of land title records in India is a significant impediment for growth and urbanization. Bad land title records result in excessive litigation, property disputes, and cases of fraud. This in turn affects the cost and certainty of transactions that involve land and real estate. While the Indian government has been operating a land record modernization program for over a decade, progress has been slow. This paper accordingly proposes that land title insurance be encouraged to reduce losses in land transactions. Title insurance will also provide buyers of land and real estate a mechanism for mitigating the risks that arise from such transactions. Insurance products cannot be launched in India without prior registration with the insurance regulator, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI). So far, IRDAI has registered some title insurance products, and it is now in the process of developing a general regulatory framework for the product. Once in place, this regulatory framework will determine the development of the title insurance market and consequently its ability to solve issues related to land transactions. Therefore, it is important that the regulatory framework adopted be suitably tailored to the unique characteristics of land title insurance as a product. In addition, the regulatory framework must give due regard to the incipient nature of the market in India. While title insurance is a new product in India, it is widely used in the United States. India’s regulatory framework can therefore be better informed by an examination of title insurance regulation in the United States. This is especially so given that insurance in the United States is determined at the state level, so different states follow different models of regulation. This diversity provides an opportunity to better understand how title insurance should be regulated given the local environment.
Topic:
Urbanization, Regulation, Land, and Insurance
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, North America, and United States of America

32. Driving Growth and Innovation in the Food Industry: Lessons from the Automobile Industry’s CAFE Standards

Author:
Hank Cardello
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Poor dietary patterns are the leading cause of noncommunicable disease in the U.S., and they are creating a significant burden on the economy and on quality of life. Diet-related disease is having a large impact on health outcomes among children and adults, leading to increasing healthcare costs, which has led to a focus on regulatory measures to curb the rising tide. Regulation has largely focused on the U.S. food system, as it provides low-cost, calorie-dense foods, which have been linked to a substantial increase in calories in the food supply and excessive calorie consumption. Substandard eating habits are linked to a number of health conditions, such as diabetes and obesity. Diabetes rates in the U.S. have more than tripled since 1970, and nearly 40 percent of adults are categorized as having obesity. The cost to the healthcare system is significant, and a myriad of health issues are linked to its pervasive spread in the country. Particularly concerning are increasing obesity rates among children, amidst continued public health interventions at the local, state, and national levels. Public health officials continue to advocate for additional regulation to shift dietary patterns. Policy efforts have ranged from voluntary commitments by the food industry to government-driven regulations such as taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages and package-labeling provisions. Most of the government regulatory approaches to date have been piecemeal, typically led by local government bodies and focusing on a specific type of food or beverage for taxation, or tending to address a particular component, such as food package labeling. For example, Berkeley, CA passed a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in 2014, and the FDA has mandated changes to food labels to increase transparency about calories and added sugars. This paper seeks to open the discussion on a broader policy approach to reduce excessive consumption of calories, sugars, saturated fats, and sodium, which are linked to conditions such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. It will do this by exploring Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, an automobile industry “cap and trade” regulatory model.
Topic:
Economics, Food, Governance, Culture, Regulation, Economic Growth, Innovation, Public Health, Society, and Obesity
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

33. China in Latin America: Major Impacts and Avenues for Constructive Engagement

Author:
Margaret Myers and Rebecca Ray
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
Over the past two years, U.S. officials have sought to highlight China’s negative effects on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region’s development and stability, whether to U.S. or Latin American audiences. As U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a trip to Mexico City in October 2018, "China has invested in ways that have left other countries worse off." Pompeo and other U.S. officials have also taken this message elsewhere in the region, cautioning against the effects of Chinese engagement on LAC governance, security, regulatory capacity, and financial stability, and in a rage of other areas. For Latin Americans, though, relations with China aren’t so black and white. China may be an imperfect partner for LAC, as many in the region will attest, but it is an increasingly important one. After nearly two decades of enhanced Chinese economic engagement with the region, LAC governments and economic sectors rely heavily on China’s economic partnership and inputs. China is LAC’s second most important trading partner, second most important source of mergers and acquisitions foreign direct investment, and top source of development finance. For South America, China’s importance is even more pronounced: It became the top export destination for South American goods in 2010. China’s effects on regional development are also mixed, as we demonstrate below. China’s contributions to the region’s economic growth are well-documented, but Chinese demand for raw materials has also accentuated regional dependence on these commodities, in a process of “re- primarization” in South American economies, with troubling implications for the region’s long-term development prospects. Chinese investments have transformed the energy sectors in some countries, but the environmental effects of hydroelectric and other projects will be long-lasting in certain cases. To achieve a wide range of development objectives—economic, environmental, and social—LAC must depend on increasingly well-planned and coordinated engagement from all of its major economic partners and donor nations, including China. This is especially true in times of growing uncertainty, as the region grapples with humanitarian and migration crises, growing populist tendencies, relentless corruption, and climate change, among other factors.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Imperialism, International Cooperation, Governance, and Regulation
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, Latin America, and North America

34. New risks to global financial stability

Author:
Hung Tran
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The post-2008 financial regulatory reform has strengthened the banking system, bringing the bank-generated liquidity expansion under control. However, central-bank liquidity has been growing significantly for more than a decade, and financial mediation has moved from banks to non-bank financial institutions, and from lending to capital-market transactions. This new system has created new financial imbalances and distortions and pose new areas of vulnerability that require appropriate policy responses. In “New Risks to Global Financial Stability” author Hung Tran, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Business & Economics program, assesses the global financial system weaknesses and outlines steps to promote financial stability. Tran updates a framework, first developed by the Committee on the Global Financial System, to recommend policy responses along three lines of defense: prevention of excess liquidity; strengthening domestic policy measures; and cooperative provision of central-bank liquidity.
Topic:
Regulation, Finance, Economy, Business, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and United States of America

35. Too Big to Fail U.S. Banks’ Regulatory Alchemy: Converting an Obscure Agency Footnote into an “At Will” Nullification of Dodd-Frank’s Regulation of the Multi-Trillion Dollar Financial Swaps Market

Author:
Michael Greenberger
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
The multi-trillion dollar market for, what was at that time wholly unregulated, over-thecounter derivatives (“swaps”) is widely viewed as a principal cause of the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown. The Dodd-Frank Act, signed into law on July 21, 2010, was expressly considered by Congress as a remedy for the deregulatory problems, in that market, that led to the crash. The legislation required the swaps market, subject to U.S. regulation, to comply with a host of business conduct and anti-competitive protections, including that the swaps market be fully transparent to U.S. financial regulators, collateralized, and capitalized. The statute also expressly provides that it would cover foreign subsidiaries of big U.S. financial institutions if their swaps trading could adversely impact the U.S. economy or represent an attempt to “evade” Dodd-Frank.
Topic:
Regulation, Finance, Banks, Commodities, and Derivatives
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

36. The Subversion of Shareholder Democracy and the Rise of Hedge-Fund Activism

Author:
Jang-Sup Shin
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper explains how hedge-fund activists are exerting power over corporate resource allocation far in excess of the actual voting power of their shareholdings. The power of these “minority-shareholding corporate raiders” derives from misguided regulatory “reforms” carried out in the 1980s and 1990s in the name of “shareholder democracy”. Sanctioned and overseen by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), these reforms include the introduction of compulsory voting by institutional investors and proxyvoting rule changes that greatly facilitated hedge-fund activists’ aggregation of the proxy votes of institutional investors. In addition, the introduction of the 1996 National Securities Markets Improvement Act (NSMIA) that allowed hedge funds to draw funds from institutional investors effectively with no limit also played an important role in the rise of hedge-fund activism. The paper concludes with policy proposals to rebalance value creation and value extraction by rebuilding the engagement and proxy voting system including (1) making it mandatory for shareholders to submit justifications in shareholder proposals on value creation or capital formation of corporations concerned; (2) removing voting as a fiduciary duty of institutional investors; (3) introducing differentiated voting rights that favor long-term shareholders; and (4) making it mandatory for both shareholders and management to reveal to the public what they discussed in engagement sessions.
Topic:
Economics, Regulation, Finance, Investment, Shareholder Democracy, Hedge Funds, and Value Extraction
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

37. The Global Exchange (Special Edition: Energy)

Author:
Colin Robertson, Max Cleland, Dennis McConaghy, Amy Myers Jaffe, Petra Dolata, Monica Gattinger, Kelly Ogle, Dennis McConaghy, Michael Mousseau, Kenneth P. Green, John Haffner, and Jim Burpee
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Global Exchange
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
The Global Exchange is the Canadian Global Affairs Institute’s quarterly magazine featuring topical articles written by our fellows and other contributing experts. Each issue contains approximately a dozen articles exploring political and strategic challenges in international affairs and Canadian foreign and defence policy. This special issue focuses on energy.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Oil, Water, Infrastructure, Gas, Regulation, Tax Systems, Risk, Services, and Renewable Energy
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

38. International Evidence on Government Support and Risk Taking in the Banking Sector

Author:
Luis Brandao-Marques, Ricardo Correa, and Horacio Sapriza
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Government support to banks through the provision of explicit or implicit guarantees affects the willingness of banks to take on risk by reducing market discipline or by increasing charter value. We use an international sample of rated banks and find that government support is associated with more risk taking by banks, especially prior and during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We also find that restricting banks range of activities ameliorates the link between government support and bank risk taking. We conclude that strengthening market discipline by reducing bank complexity is needed to address this moral hazard problem.
Topic:
Governance, Regulation, Risk, and Banking
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

39. EU Privacy Regulation: Implications for U.S. and EI Law Enforcement

Author:
Carlton Forbes and Jacob Victor
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Legal Challenges, Yale Law School
Abstract:
In January 2012, the European Commission released drafts of two new pieces of legislation that would provide more stringent and more uniform regulation to the processing of electronic data relating to EU citizens. The proposed General Data Protection Regulation would govern the processing of data for general purposes, while the proposed Criminal Justice Directive would govern data processed in the specific context of criminal investigations. The Data Protection Regulation has proven controversial because of the significant number of requirements it imposes on private data processors, including requirements that the processor notify a consumer when her data is shared with a third party, and requirements that processors respect a number of new individual rights, such as the right of a consumer to request that her data be deleted (a.k.a. “the right to be forgotten”). Furthermore, the Regulation would mandate that many non-EU corporations would need to comply with its requirements when processing the data of EU citizens, or face harsh penalties. This memo summarizes the existing EU data protection regime, analyzes the changes proposed by the new Data Protection Regulation and Criminal Justice Directive, and explores the implications of this new legislation for U.S. criminal and national security investigations. We arrive at three main conclusions
Topic:
Law Enforcement, Law, European Union, Regulation, and Legal Theory
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

40. Escape from New York: The Market Impact of SEC Rule 12h-6

Author:
Nuno Fernandes, Uger Lel, and Darius P. Miller
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We examine the stock market impact of SEC Rule 12h-6 which eased the ability of foreign firms to deregister with the SEC and as a result terminate their U.S. disclosure obligations under the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. We document that the market reacted negatively to the ability of firms from weak disclosure and governance countries to more easily opt out of the stringent U.S. reporting and legal environment. Our findings suggest that shareholders of non-U.S firms place significant value on U.S. securities regulations, especially when the home country investor protections are weak.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Regulation, Legal Theory, and SEC
Political Geography:
United States and North America