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Institutional and political forces create strong inertial pressures that make updating legislation a difficult task. As a result, laws often stagnate, leading to the continued existence of obsolete rules and policies that serve long-forgotten purposes. Recognizing this inertial power, legislatures over the last few decades have increasingly relied on a perceived solution--temporary legislation. In theory, this measure avoids inertia by requiring legislators to choose to extend a law deliberately. This Article argues that temporary legislation is a doubleedged sword. While some temporary laws ultimately expire, many perpetuate through cycles of extension and reauthorization. Temporary legislation often creates its own inertial force, leading to the unintended permanence of what was originally believed to be provisional. Using a case study from a large public subsidy adopted as a localized fix to a temporary problem, this Article demonstrates how the subsidy has inadvertently grown in scope and in size, creating its own inertial pathways that made its repeal exceedingly difficult. Path-dependent dynamics of temporary legislation affect not only present-day policies, but also the ability of legislatures to resist status quo bias and bring about legal change. This Article concludes with normative insights on ways to utilize flexible rulemaking whilst circumventing legislative inaction. Careful design of expiring provisions that is aware of the inertial power of temporary legislation can effectively ensure that laws are kept or discarded given their merits, not by force of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the first empirical examination of giving to §501(c)(4) organizations, which have recently become important players in U.S. politics. Unlike gifts to charity, donations to a 501(c)(4) are not legally deductible. Yet, gifts to c(4) organizations are highly elastic to the after-tax price of charitable giving. At the lower end of the observed tax price range, c(4) giving falls with tax price, consistent with the hypothesis that giving to c(3) and c(4) organizations are substitutes. Over the top quarter of the distribution of tax price, however, gifts to c(4) organizations are negatively correlated with the after-tax price of giving to charity. That is, donors appear to respond as though the deduction subsidized their gift to a c(4). Donor responses to benefits for which they are not eligible may reflect the low salience of legal limitations or deliberate overclaiming. These results imply subsidies for charity can crowd out or in donations to c(4) organizations, with potential implications for U.S. politics. I cannot observe whether donors claim tax deductions for ineligible gifts, so the net results for the Treasury are unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of the too big to manage (TBTM) issue, which asserts that big banks and financial institutions face unique governance challenges including extreme opacity, run risk, and weak market discipline. It discusses how TBTM banks will not voluntarily break themselves up because they benefit from implicit government subsidies unavailable to smaller firms. It also presents few proposals to solve the TBTM problem suffer from critical shortcomings.

Government provision of land and natural resources has provoked major trade disputes over the issue of subsidies. Yet, how to identify the existence of a subsidy when the government is the sole or predominant provider--a common phenomenon due to the government control of natural resources in many countries--remains unsettled under the law of the World Trade Organization. At the heart of the controversy is the issue of benchmarking. Since the normal benchmark of domestic market prices cannot be properly utilized when the market price is the government monopoly price, it becomes necessary to resort to alternative benchmarks. Although the WTO Appellate Body ("AB") has articulated certain principles and made some suggestions, what has prevailed in practice is the use of external market prices as the benchmark in identifying a subsidy in the country of provision. This approach, however, disregards the most basic source of comparative advantage of a trading nation: its natural endowment. This Article makes several contributions. First, it traces the drafting history of relevant WTO rules and attempts to discover the rationale of an abandoned proposal that would have completely changed the legal landscape on the issue of government monopoly and subsidies. Second, it systemically examines WTO benchmarking jurisprudence, which has evolved through multiple cases involving Canadian softwood lumber, Indian minerals, Indonesian timber, and Chinese land. Third, it highlights the concept of resource rent and analyzes how the treatment of resource rent in the system of public ownership might affect the application of WTO subsidy regulation. Finally, it proposes the alternative of constructing domestic market benchmarks on the basis of optimal use of natural resources via economic modeling, which may have broad implications for dealing with the special problem of subsidization in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issue of food surpluses in the United States and presents a number of strategies to deal with this situation. The author notes a number of lessons learned from past experience with food surpluses, including the fact that neither price fixing nor government purchasing alone work as long term solutions to food surplus problems. According to the author, the only permanent solution is to bring consumption and production levels into balance, by either increasing consumption or decreasing production.

The article discusses how governments can use laws related to cross-subsidies pay for public goods out of the pockets of consumers rather than taxpayers and discusses how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) underwrites care for women and people with illnesses or disabilities through higher insurance premium payments by men.

El artículo presenta la ley y casos judiciales sobre el transporte marítimo y la logística aplicada en España y en la Unión Europea (UE). Diversos temas relacionados con el derecho y los casos que se examinan incluyen los servicios ferroviarios e instalaciones en la Unión Europea, las subvenciones a las tasas de interés sobre la construcción de barcos en España y las reglas y normas de inspección de los buques.

Purpose This study aims to provide a better understanding of the market balance between regular (high-carbon) and green (low-carbon) products. Further, this study analyses the role of government subsidy policy, based on the results of the government’s optimal green subsidy decision and its implication for green market segmentation and social welfare.Design/methodology/approach This study adopts a Stackelberg game framework to study the interaction between the government’s subsidy regulations and the firms’ marketing regimes. When considering government subsidy decision, we use multi-objective programming theory and turn the problem into weighted single-objective optimisation programming.Findings This study explores three marketing regimes and identifies the conditions under which each regime should be adopted by a firm. Further, investigating the optimal subsidy decision problem for the government reveals three subsidy regimes corresponding to the three marketing regimes. The government may be stuck in a regime of useless subsidy and the reason for this phenomenon is analysed as well.Research limitations/implications Developing the model into a more complex supply chain situation will enhance the applicability of the framework. Incorporating other environmental regulations, such as carbon tax, can be interesting research extensions of this study.Practical implications This study provides a quantitative framework, which can help the regulator gain a deeper understanding of green subsidy policies and assist focal companies in acquiring a better appreciation of green marketing segmentation.Originality/value The study is one of the first few works to explore the optimal design of green subsidy regulation for the government and its impact on market segmentations of high- and low-carbon products by using quantitative modelling approaches and deriving vital managerial insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the government subsidies doctrine which applied to cash benefits and the court case trademark registration in In re Tam which should not be extended to monetizable benefits like intellectual property rights. It mentions monetizable benefits provided to trademark registrants under the U.S. Lanham Act and problem of limited federal funding. It also mentions expanding the doctrine would grant the government too much power to discriminate against speech.

The article offers information on how land-use trajectories affect ecosystem services (ES) in mountain landscapes. Topics discussed include absence of provisioning, regulating, and cultural services relative to services in more natural (less developed) areas; importance of urban ES and urban biota, and biodiversity; and the reduction in predation pressures and increase in human subsidies.

The constitutionality of conditional offers from the government is a transsubstantive issue with broad and growing practical implications, but it has always been a particular problem for free speech. Recent developments suggest at least three new approaches to the problem, but no easy solutions to it. The first approach would permit conditions that define the limits of the government spending program, while forbidding conditions that leverage funding so as to regulate speech outside the contours of the program. This is an appealing distinction, but runs into some of the same challenges as public forum analysis. The second approach would treat conditional offers to purchase speech like other proposed economic transactions, invalidating them when they are coercive. This principle helps explain many recent cases, including the healthcare decision. And yet the Court's willingness to find coercion in cases involving conditional offers from the government is hard to square with its approach to campaign finance law and its apparent faith in markets more generally. The third and final approach would treat limits on conditional offers not as individual rights, but as structural limitations on the scope of government. This approach, too, points in the direction of possible solutions--and also further problems--for analyzing the constitutionality of subsidized speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey of the theoretical and empirical literature on alternative policies to promote new fiber-based communications infrastructures addresses (i) various kinds of ex ante sector-specific regulations, (ii) deregulatory approaches based on effective competition law implementation and competitive market structures including co-investment models, and (iii) public subsidies to cover non-profitable (white) areas. The authors identify significant research gaps and present a generic framework for policy recommendations. Public subsidies emerge as the dominant policy alternative in white areas, whereas access regulations can be the preferred policy in white or gray areas, where only monopoly structure or co-investment models lead to private investment. Deregulatory policies might be preferable in gray areas, provided there is sufficient pressure from competitive outside options and if competition law is strong. Finally, deregulatory policies including soft regulation are the dominant policy in black areas, where several independent infrastructure operators exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the extraordinary work of Foucault, Shapin and Schaffer, Porter, and many others, we are familiar with many of the practices of governance which emerged during the 19th century at the intersection of the modern social sciences and the modern state, as 'naturalized' knowledge of an objectified social body formed the foundation of specific kinds of social and political order. But over the course of the 20th century, critiques of objectivity have become commonplace, and a post-positivist epistemological revolution has taken root in many quarters. How, then, have practices of governance-through-knowledge modified themselves in response to a century of such critiques? This article takes inspiration from the work of Jasanoff, Riles, Latour and others to identify a mode of 'governing as if: a pragmatic mode of governance which works not through the production of objective knowledge as the shared epistemic foundation for political settlements, but rather by generating knowledge claims that stabilize social orderings precisely through their self-conscious partiality, contingency, and context-dependence. This argument is developed using the illustration of global subsidies regulation in World Trade Organization law, focussing in particular on the knowledge practices by which particular conceptions of 'the market' are produced and deployed in the course of its operation. The article argues that the standard criticisms of naturalized economic conceptions of the 'free market', developed in various scholarly traditions throughout the 20th century, do not provide an adequate account of economic governance working in 'as if mode, either positively or normatively. It further argues, following Riles, that such regimes of governance derive their effectiveness fundamentally from their 'hollow core', and that it is in the constant and active work of 'hollowing out' that we are likely to find their characteristic modalities of power and underlying structural dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) pose an increasing number of challenges to the international trade regime. One of the issues is how to regulate state-owned enterprises under the World Trade Organization's rules on subsidies. This paper tackles the issue of what criteria decide whether an SOE can be a 'public body' that provides subsidies to other enterprises under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Appellate Body's jurisprudence on this issue is not clear, and the debate regarding the proper line between 'public body' and 'private body' continues. This paper is the first attempt to provide a systematic and objective analysis of three different approaches in interpreting the term 'public body', providing a framework for further discussions on the proper legal status of Chinese SOEs under the World Trade Organization (WTO) legal regime. By examining the negotiation history and varying approaches to the issue, this paper identifies the problems of current Appellate Body's approach and provides proposals for future clarification. Taking Chinese SOEs as examples, this paper also analyzes potential impact of different approaches on SOEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) January 2013 report "Energy Subsidy Reform: Lessons and Implications." Topics include the distorting effect of energy subsidies, which the author argues disguise the true societal cost of energy, the negative impact of energy subsidies on a nation's fiscal policy, and the negative externalities, or spillover costs, in energy production and use that inflict damages on society.

Purpose: We consider a dynamic duopoly market in which two firms respectively produce green products and conventional products. The two types of product can substitute each other in some degree. Their demand rates depend on not only prices but the consumers' increasing environmental awareness. Too high initial cost relative to conventional products becomes one of the major obstacles that hinder the adoption of green products. The government employs subsidy policy to trigger the adoption of green products. The purpose of the paper is to explore the optimal subsidy strategy to fulfill the government's objective. Design/methodology/approach: We suppose the players in the game employ open-loop strategies, which make sense since the government generally cannot alter his policy for political and economic purposes. We take a differential game approach and use backward induction to analyze the firms' pricing strategy under Cournot competition, and then focus upon a Stackelberg equilibrium to find the optimal subsidy strategy of the government. Findings: The results show that the more remarkable the energy or environmental performance, or the bigger the initial cost of green products, the higher the subsidy level should be. Due to the increasing environmental awareness and the learning curve, the optimal subsidy level decreases over time. Research limitations/implications: In our model several simplifying assumptions are made to keep the analysis more tractable. In particular, we have assumed only one type of green product. In reality several types of product with different energy or environmental performances exist. Our research can be extended in future work to take into account product differentiation on energy or environmental performance and devise a discriminatory subsidy policy accordingly. Originality/value: In the paper we set the objective of the government as minimizing the total social cost induced by the energy consumption or environmental side effect and government expenditure. In addition, we assume the price of conventional products is variable and examine the Cournot competition between the two firms. This study can provide more valuable managerial insights into improving the design of subsidy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of government policy in technology licensing decision. We show that both the outside and the inside innovators license a new product (or drastic process innovation) to all potential licensees in the presence of tax/subsidy policies. An implication of our analysis is that a monopolist producer may prefer technology licensing in a homogeneous goods industry. Our results also provide a rationale for franchising to multiple sellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opinion on the conformity with law of a draft Budget Act for 2013 in relation to educational part of general subsidies for local self-government units - part 82 of the State budget (Opinion prepared on November 5, 2012 on the request of the Bureau of Research of the Chancellery of the Sejm): The author presents an analysis of the method of calculation of the amount of money appropriated for educational part of general subsidies in the draft Budget Act for 2013, in the context of Article 28 (1) of the Act on Revenues of Local Self-government Units. In her view, that method is consistent with the above mentioned provision. She also argues that, even if the amount declared to the Tripartite Committee on Social and Economic Affairs, this cannot be considered as an important defect, so it would provide an independent basis for declaration of inconsistency of the statute with Polish Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the importance of networks in co-coordinating the environmentally sound technology (EST) innovation and the diffusion technology. It mentions laws and economic frame of transnational network theory while discussing failures of the EST markets. Topics discussed include the World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence for subsidies of the infant renewable industry, instruments and climate technology network and trade, environment and human rights as the building blocks.

In 1994, the Japanese Diet implemented a system of public assistance for political parties which many hoped would encourage party-centred rather than candidate-centred campaigns. This study examines some of the consequences of this system for party organizations and politicians. Using data culled from official subsidy and campaign finance reports, two empirical questions are addressed: first, how has the advent of the subsidy affected the funds available to national party organizations and to individual politicians? Second, what are the factors that shape the allocation of the subsidy from national party organizations to party branches? It is argued that the subsidy has made it easier for party organizations to access funds but that the amounts of subsidies received by individual politicians are generally too small to alleviate much of their fund-raising pressures. In addition, party leaders have allocated the subsidy largely by following a principle of equality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on economies of agglomeration and the natural benefits of the integration of resident's location with business markets. It discusses the role of local government in the U.S. to encourage the development process by using policy tools and subsidies for creating mix of industrial, commercial and residential development. It informs about certain negotiations by private parties for efficiently producing and capturing of benefits in regulations break up of agglomerations.

Abstract: In this paper, we study the economics of parking provision for the morning commute, where all the parking lots are owned and operated by private operators. The parking capacity allocations, parking fees and access times are considered in a parking market. First we solve the parking market equilibrium without regulatory intervention, revealing four types of competitive equilibrium. Only one of the four types of equilibrium, however, is found to be stable and realistic, and under it each parking area is preferred by the commuters during certain time periods. Compared to the case without parking choice, provision of parking through a competitive market is able to reduce commuters’ travel cost and queuing delay, but it does not necessarily lead to the most desirable market outcome that minimizes social cost or commuter cost. This issue can be addressed through market regulations, such as price-ceiling, capacity-floor or capacity-ceiling, and a quantity tax/subsidy regulation. It is found that both price-ceiling and quantity tax/subsidy regulations can efficiently reduce both the system cost and commuter cost under certain conditions, and help ensure the stability of the parking market. Numerical examples are also provided to illustrate these findings and furthermore, how a price ceiling or a quantity tax/subsidy should be set in a parking market under realistic model parameters. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the U.S. financial crisis of the early 21st century and compares governmental reaction to the crisis with the U.S. banking crises of the late 1970s and 1980s. According to the author, the U.S. government established several banking regulations and agencies including the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA) in 1989, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) in 1991. The author argues that the FDICIA was set aside during the financial crisis of 2008. The article also discusses the subsidization of mortgage default risk and the U.S. government's policies toward mortgage lending from U.S. banks which the author states dated to 1913, and explores the role of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

Policy and human livelihoods modelling increasingly demands integrated research which requires ecological expertise. However, contributions from ecologists are often based on sparse data. Rather than discounting such data, in this paper we demonstrate how ecological modelling can effectively contribute to the development of policy recommendations in spite of data constraints. In a petrol subsidy analysis in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, we accounted for ecological data uncertainty by (a) assuming large parameter value ranges and (b) conducting a robustness test for policy recommendations. In addition to data scarcity, counter-intuitive results emerged emphasising the need for model validation. These counter-intuitive results indicated that decreasing petrol prices led to increased poverty. This informed a policy recommendation to prevent the reduction of petrol prices below IDR 5500 per litre. Using two key livelihood resources (fish and honey), we found that while a traditional sensitivity analysis suggested highly robust results, a robustness test indicated that policy recommendations would change if the incorrectness of parameter values approached 50%. The results show that ecological modelling can contribute effectively in spite of sparse data to guide policy, as well as identifying future research priorities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper argues that the most obvious measure to combat greenhouse gas emissions is to remove the vast subsidies that promote higher energy consumption in more than half of the countries in the world, and that this measure should take precedence over many others. The article discusses also why removing energy subsidies is so difficult, and which type of state may succeed. This question is examined with reference to China, India and Russia, all major contributors to global warming. Non-democratic governments and energy importers might be expected to be more likely to halt subsidies. In fact, energy trade imbalances do not seem to significantly affect the capacity to reduce subsidies. The risk of social unrest is a political restraint in all three countries. Perhaps surprisingly, democratic states may be better positioned to remove subsidies than non-democratic ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents ways for advocates to help limited English proficient tenants with rental assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It presents an analysis on how advocates can prevent the tenants from being evicted or lose their tenant-based subsidy as covered by federal, state, and local law. The census data on the language used and the number of foreign-born people in the U.S. are also discussed.

The financial challenges facing the aviation industry have brought uncertainty about many routes flown by commercial carriers. Some carriers have ceased operating altogether, and legacy and low-cost carriers alike have eliminated low-yield and unprofitable routes. In some cases, service reductions have cut off communities entirely from the national air transportation system. One means of attracting and sustaining scheduled passenger service is to subsidise or incentivise those routes considered necessary or desirable by the local community but which may not be profitable for an air carrier. The system of permissible subsidies and incentives in the USA is highly fractured -- legally, politically and practically. The federal government provides subsidies and air service development grants under a costly and controversial programme. State and local governments provide subsidies and support to airlines as an alternative or in addition to federal support. Airport operators are strictly prohibited from directly subsidising air carriers, and instead must rely on a complex and ill-defined suite of options for supporting and promoting scheduled passenger service. This paper summarises the state of the law on airline subsidies and incentives, and offers observations on the likely future of the various programmes and approaches. The paper specifically examines airport incentives, state and local government subsidies and incentives, federal subsidies under the Essential Air Service programme, and federal grants under the Small Community Air Service Development Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Notwithstanding the fact that ERISA was enacted to protect employee benefits, courts have narrowly construed the relief available when benefits are denied out of concern that a stronger remedy would be too costly for the system to bear. Judges, I argue, are ill equipped to make this policy judgment. Instead, a regulated, subsidized, paternalistic market should be created to permit the benefit players themselves to choose and price the strength of the remedy they desire. This is a superior means to reach the right level of remedial strength for the most players. To protect against undesirably weak remedial options being selected, I propose the market should have a highly protective default remedial option, clear disclosure rules, subsidies, and a regulatory floor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a benchmark static incentive scheme, i.e. a per unit subsidy, that induces a monopoly to produce a target output level. We show that the same output level can be achieved by a continuum of dynamic subsidy rules based on a performance indicator. The rules require only local information. The present value of the subsidies paid is smaller than the amount paid under the static subsidy. Each of the dynamic subsidy rules results at each moment in a lower per unit subsidy than the static subsidy. The subsidy rate depends on a state variable that reflects the monopolist's performance history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a court case involving the application of the European Union (EU) State aid law. In the ruling of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice in the case Ministerio dell' Industria, del Commercio e dell' Artigianato v. Lucchini SpA, formerly Lucchini Siderurgica SpA on July 18, 2007, it is concluded that European law precludes the application of Article 20909 of the Italian Civil Code. The ruling also cites the limited involvement of national cours in defining and applying the notion of State aid under Article 88(3) EC.

The article examines the notion of inaccessibility of legitimate expectations in European Union (EU) State aid law, based on the study of the relevant case law and judgment practice. Barrett, in his study of the issue, shows that the principle of legitimate expectations is largely constituted by judge-made law, resulting to inconsistencies in the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), specifically in the field of State aid. It is proposed by the author that the doctrine of legitimate expectations should be extended to cases where the aid recipient could legitimately believe that the measure concerned did not constitute an aid within the meaning of Article 87 EC.

This article discusses the panel report "United States - Subsidies on Upland Cotton - Recourse to Article 21.5 of the DSU by Brazil" released by the World Trade Organization. The U.S. and Brazil each appeals certain issues of law and legal interpretations developed in the panel report. Brazil challenged various U.S. measures that Brazil alleged constituted actionable subsidies within the meaning of Part III of the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.

The paper analyses the legal significance of subsidies from the aspect of provision of free and fair competition in international trade. Due to its implications and significance, both in terms of liberalisation of international trade and in terms of protection of national economic interests against unfair acts of foreign importers, this issue belongs to the corps of current and disputable issues in foreign trade law. The paper analyses primarily the concept of protection of subsidies in our new foreign trade legislation, naturally in correlation with supra-national international legal rules in the subject field that have emerged within the World Trade Organisation and European Union. Our legal system has long been handicapped because of the lack of quality pieces of legislation that would sanction unfair competition in international trade based on the above-mentioned grounds. The process of liberalisation of our foreign trade system and constant foreign trade deficit make the problem of protection of our own economy and creating of appropriate defence instrumentation more and more urgent. That is why the development of adequate rules on subsidies through enactment of the Law on Foreign Trade Operations from 2005 makes a significant step forward in this field. The relevant legal rules of our positive law observe basically the standards of the EU and WTO legislation. However, it is not sufficient to enact new regulations harmonised with international standards but it is necessary to provide conditions and accompanying institutional capacities for their interpretation and implementation, which is the field that we are traditionally in deficit with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insights on the impact of global trade and subsidy policies on trade in developing countries. Major distortions in global merchandise trade include services trade and foreign investments. The global dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the World Bank was used to analyze trade and welfare effects of trade distortions. Current trade policies would be costing the global economy $287 billion per year by 2015 based on the model.