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152. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play
- Author:
- Jason Kuznicki
- Publication Date:
- 10-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- I often tell aspiring libertarians that they both can and should learn from people who are far removed from them ideologically. Indeed, if they fail to do so, then they are neglecting a vital part of their self-education. When asked whom I have in mind, I almost always mention James C. Scott. Two of Scott's earlier books, Seeing Like a State and The Art of Not Being Governed, are fascinating intellectual excursions for people of the libertarian bent, as well as for many others.
- Political Geography:
- America and Europe
153. How China Became Capitalist
- Author:
- James A. Dorn
- Publication Date:
- 10-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In 1981, shortly after China began to liberalize its economy, Steven N. S. Cheung predicted that free markets would trump state planning and eventually China would “go 'capitalist'.” He grounded his analysis in property rights theory and the new institutional economics, of which he was a pioneer. Ronald Coase, a longtime professor of law and economics at the University of Chicago and Cheung's colleague during 1967–69, agreed with that prediction. Now the Nobel laureate economist has teamed up with Ning Wang, a former student and a senior fellow at the Ronald Coase Institute, to provide a detailed account of “how China became capitalist.”
- Political Geography:
- China and Chicago
154. The Use of Public Assistance Benefits by Citizens and Non-citizen Immigrants in the United States
- Author:
- Leighton Ku and Brian Bruen
- Publication Date:
- 02-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- Claims are sometimes made that immigrants use public benefits, such as Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs, more often than those who are born in the United States. This report provides analyses, using the most recent data from the Census Bureau, that counter these claims. In reality, low-income non-citizen immigrants, including adults and children, are generally less likely to receive public benefits than those who are native-born. Moreover, when non-citizen immigrants receive benefits, the value of benefits they receive is usually lower than the value of benefits received by those born in the United States. The combination of lower average utilization and smaller average benefits indicates that the overall cost of public benefits is substantially less for low-income non-citizen immigrants than for comparable native-born adults and children. The report also explains that the lower use of public benefits by non-citizen immigrants is not surprising, since federal rules restrict immigrants' eligibility for these public benefit programs.
- Topic:
- Economics, Health, Humanitarian Aid, Markets, and Immigration
- Political Geography:
- United States
155. Reducing Livability: How Sustainability Planning Threatens the American Dream
- Author:
- Randal O'Toole
- Publication Date:
- 10-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- In response to state laws and federal incentives, cities and metropolitan areas across the country are engaged in “sustainability planning” aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In many if not most cases, this planning seeks to reshape urban areas to reduce the amount of driving people do. In general, this means increasing urban population densities and in particular replacing low-density neighborhoods in transit corridors with dense, mixed-use developments.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, Infrastructure, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- America
156. Antitrust Enforcement in the Obama Administration's First Term: A Regulatory Approach
- Author:
- William F. Shughart II and Diana W. Thomas
- Publication Date:
- 10-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- During his presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama criticized sharply the lax anti-trust law enforcement record of the George W. Bush administration. Subsequently, his first assistant attorney general for antitrust even went so far as to suggest that the Great Recession was, at least in part, caused by federal antitrust policy failures during the previous eight years. This paper sets out to investigate how and in what ways antitrust enforcement has changed since President Obama took office in 2009. We review four recent antitrust cases and the behavioral remedies that were imposed on the defendants in those matters in detail. We find that the Obama administration has been significantly more active in enforcing the antitrust laws with respect to proposed mergers than his two predecessors in the White House had been. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission, together with the Department of Justice, withdrew a thoughtful report on the enforcement of Section 2 of the Sherman Act and issued new merger guidelines and a new merger policy remedy guide, all of which have moved antitrust law enforcement away from traditional structural remedies in favor of very intrusive behavioral remedies in an unprecedented fashion. That policy shift has further transformed antitrust law enforcers into regulatory agencies, a mission for which they are not well-suited, resulting in the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission being more vulnerable to rent seeking.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Governance, and Law Enforcement
157. Why Growth Is Getting Harder
- Author:
- Brink Lindsey
- Publication Date:
- 10-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- For over a century, the trend line for the long-term growth of the U.S. economy has held remarkably steady. Notwithstanding huge changes over time in economic, social, and political conditions, growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has fluctuated fairly closely around an average annual rate of approximately 2 percent. Looking ahead, however, there are strong reasons for doubting that this historic norm can be maintained.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Financial Crisis, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- United States
158. Is Public Expenditure Productive? Evidence from the Manufacturing Sector in U.S. Cities, 1880–1920
- Author:
- Dean Stansel and Melissa Yeoh
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- This article provides the first examination of the relationship between public expenditures and labor productivity that focuses on municipalities, rather than states or nations. We use data for 1880–1920, a period of rapid industrialization in which there were both high levels of public infrastructure spending and rapid growth of productivity. We use a simple Cobb-Douglas production function to model labor productivity in the manufacturing sector, letting total factor productivity depend on “productive” public expenditure by city governments—that is, on public spending that may raise the productivity of labor and encourage human capital accumulation. Using a data set of 45 of the largest cities in the United States, we find no statistically significant relationship between productive public expenditure and labor productivity in the manufacturing sector during this period. These findings are robust to three different econometric approaches. We do, however, find a strongly positive and statistically significant relationship between private capital and labor productivity. Our results are consistent with those of much of the literature examining this same relationship in states and nations and they have important implications for contemporary public policy issues.
- Political Geography:
- United States
159. Providing Access to Electricity for the Unserved: A Free-Market Solution
- Author:
- Paul Ballonoff
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- The traditional problem often called “Electricity development” is to improve and expand services from an established monopolistic electricity supplier. The lack of an effective dominant utility, however, is a defining condition for the 1.4 billion people without access for electricity, the so-called unserved. Therefore, the issues that arise are different from those of traditional utility service as a mandated monopoly. This article shows how free markets can help resolve the problem of serving the unserved.
160. Brazilian Land Tenure and Conflicts: The Landless Peasants Movement
- Author:
- Carlos Pestana Barros, Ari Francisco de Araujo Jr., and João Ricardo Faria
- Publication Date:
- 01-2013
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Cato Journal
- Institution:
- The Cato Institute
- Abstract:
- This article analyzes conflicts in Brazil involving landless peasants and the violence that frequently results from their invasion and occupation of privately owned rural land for the period 2000–08. Land ownership in Brazil is overwhelmingly and historically characterized by large, family-owned estates (Pichon 1997). The unequal and inequitable allocation of land together with weak institutions, weak markets, and low asset endowment may make land reform a low priority (Binswanger and McIntire 1987, Sjaastad and Bromley 1997). In the absence of effective land reforms, these factors may lead to the occupation of land by the landless poor peasants by violent means (Assunção 2008). In such an environment, land-related conflicts are common and have been previously analyzed in several studies, with a particular focus on Africa (Andre and Platteau 1998, Deininger and Castagnini 2004) and Latin America (Alston, Libecap,and Mueller 2005).
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Brazil, and Latin America