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The Indian nations of the United States face a rare opportunity. This is not the occasional business opportunity of reservation legend, when some eager investor would arrive at tribal offices with a proposal ”guaranteed” to produce millions of dollars for the tribe-although such investors still appear, promises in hand. Nor is it the niche economic opportunity of gaming, although that has transformed some tribes’ situations in important ways. This opportunity is a political and organizational one. It is a chance to rethink, restructure, reorganize-a chance not to start a business or exploit an economic niche but to substantially reshape the future. It is the opportunity for nation-building.

INTRODUCTIONContemporary American Indian reservations are notable for, among other things, extreme poverty, a host of related social problems, and economies founded largely on transfer payments and governmental services. These signs of low standards of well-being-both economic and social-are enigmatic. Despite decades of professed federal and public concern and a seemingly endless flow of federal and private dollars, there is as yet relatively little sign of meaningful improvement on most reservations, or of the emergence of sustainable productive activity. American Indian tribes have significant sovereign powers, yet tribal governments are frequently ineffective. Most Indians apparently desire to maintain and build upon distinctive tribal identities and communities, yet social pathologies undermine many Indian societies with disheartening results.These problems are indicative of more than a lack of economic development. American Indian societies face problems of economic, social, and political underdevelopment. Some of the reasons for this state of affairs are readily apparent: the systematic expropriation of many Indian resources, for example, coupled with decades of paternalistic non-Indian controls over reservation affairs. But even aside from these daunting obstacles to economic progress, development remains a complex problem, and in the Indian case a particularly difficult one to get a handle on. The questions it raises go, in the deepest sense, to the sources of wealth and societal well-being of nations: What are the ingredients that are necessary for a society to improve its economic standard of living with social and political consequences that the members of that society find acceptable? How does a society accomplish a substantive economic transformation without losing control of its own desired character and direction?

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development is the largest and most comprehensive effort to understand how Indian nations can overcome persistent poverty and restore their own economic vitality and social sovereignty. The project's research base, services to Indian nations, executive education, teaching, and outreach are described, and future directions are discussed. (MSE)

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) issuance of RM95-3 and RM 95-4 regarding changes in natural gas pipeline regulation raised questions on the possible violation of contract confidentiality between natural gas pipelines and its customers. The FERC has applied the principle of public policy in defending its moves to make public its analysis of said contracts. To solve this problem, FERC has the option to limit the information released to the public. It can also force the monitoring of contract negotiations in the industry.

While economists recognize that private cartels are difficult to sustain, they are too sanguine about the prospects for government-assisted cartels. Although the state's coercive power would seem to make it an effective enforcer of cartel agreements, the political costs of enforcement can be high if segments of the industry resist. The government's solution lies in alternative strategies for raising prices. Examining government efforts to organize an orange cartel in the 1930s, we find that farmers' opposition to output cuts and quota assignments because of their distributional effects forced a policy shift to purchases of 'excess stocks.', 'Even today, most important enduring monopolies or near monopolies in the United States rest upon government policies. The government's support is responsible for fixing agricultural prices above competitive levels, for [...]