regulation

Air Pollution in China Shuts Down City of 11 Million

The airpocalypse is back. What should Chinese leaders do about it?

On Sunday, the start of the heating season in northern China brought the “airpocalypse” back with a vengeance (although some might say it never left).  Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province and home to 11 million people, registered fine particulate (PM2.5) pollution levels beyond 500 on the Chinese Air Quality Index, which is considered hazardous …

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Playing Chicken With Food Safety

Food safety doesn’t get the attention it deserves from regulators. Case in point: the latest Salmonella outbreak.

Food safety is something of a step-child of U.S. regulation.  The public obviously cares about it, but it lacks the kind of attention from advocacy groups that the environment gets.  The results have not been pretty. Food safety is divided between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (for …

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UK report: behavioral change takes more than a nudge

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. No one seems to like the idea of regulation these days. Nudges, alternatives that try to get people to voluntarily alter their behavior by changing the context in which they make decisions, have been widely touted as a better approach. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s “regulatory czar” in the Office of Management and Budget, …

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A Good Week for Environmental Federalism

This has been a very good week for proponents of environmental federalism. On Tuesday, President Obama convened a Rose Garden ceremony to announce first-ever federal regulatory mandates specifically designed to address global warming. The federal government’s new CAFE standards for new cars and light trucks, beginning with the 2012 model year, will simultaneously reduce greenhouse …

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