The Changing Character of Regulation: A Comparison of Europe and the United States

European and U.S. regulatory policies have changed considerably over the past 30 years. In Europe, since the mid-1980s, consumer and environmental regulation has become more politically salient and regulations have by and large become stricter. On the other hand, in the United States consumer and environmental issues have become less salient and contentious, and regulations have not become (comparatively) stricter. This apparent "flip-flop" of regulatory systems has not been analyzed in much detail to date. This perspective is an attempt to analyze some examples in which it has occurred and identifies one possible cause--namely, credibility.     

Analyzing Precautionary Regulation: Do Precaution,Science, and Innovation Go Together?

In this article we argue that the precautionary principle, as applied to the regulation of science and technology, cannot be considered in any general manner inconsistent with the norms and methods of scientific knowledge generation and justification. Moreover, it does not necessarily curtail scientific‐technological innovation. Our argument flows from a differentiated view of what precaution in regulation means. We first characterize several of the most relevant interpretations given to the precautionary principle in academic debate and regulatory practice. We then use examples of actual precaution‐based regulation to show that, even though science can have varying functions in different circumstances and frames, all of those interpretations recur to scientific method and knowledge, and tend to imply innovation in methods, products, and processes. In fact, the interplay of regulation and innovation in precautionary policy, at least in the case of the interpretations of precaution that our analysis takes into account, could be understood as a way of reconciling the two fundamental science and technology policy functions of promotion and control.     

Two Questions about European Unemployment

A general equilibrium search model makes layoff costs affect the aggregate unemployment rate in ways that depend on equilibrium proportions of frictional and structural unemployment that in turn depend on the generosity of government unemployment benefits and skill losses among newly displaced workers. The model explains how, before the 1970s, lower flows into unemployment gave Europe lower unemployment rates than the United States and also how, after 1980, higher durations have kept unemployment rates in Europe persistently higher than in the United States. These outcomes arise from the way Europe's higher firing costs and more generous unemployment compensation make its unemployment rate respond to bigger skill losses among newly displaced workers. Those bigger skill losses also explain why U.S. workers have experienced more earnings volatility since 1980 and why, especially among older workers, hazard rates of gaining employment in Europe now fall sharply with increases in the duration of unemployment.     

Quantifying Potential Human Health Impacts of Animal Antibiotic Use: Enrofloxacin and Macrolides in Chickens

Use of similar or identical antibiotics in both human and veterinary medicine has come under increasing scrutiny by regulators concerned that bacteria resistant to animal antibiotics will infect people and resist treatment with similar human antibiotics, leading to excess illnesses and deaths. Scientists, regulators, and interest groups in the United States and Europe have urged bans on nontherapeutic and some therapeutic uses of animal antibiotics to protect human health. Many regulators and public health experts have also expressed dissatisfaction with the perceived limitations of quantitative risk assessment and have proposed alternative qualitative and judgmental approaches ranging from "attributable fraction" estimates to risk management recommendations based on the precautionary principle or on expert judgments about the importance of classes of compounds in human medicine. This article presents a more traditional quantitative risk assessment of the likely human health impacts of continuing versus withdrawing use of fluoroquinolones and macrolides in production of broiler chickens in the United States. An analytic framework is developed and applied to available data. It indicates that withdrawing animal antibiotics can cause far more human illness-days than it would prevent: the estimated human BENEFIT:RISK health ratio for human health impacts of continued animal antibiotic use exceeds 1,000:1 in many cases. This conclusion is driven by a hypothesized causal sequence in which withdrawing animal antibiotic use increases illnesses rates in animals, microbial loads in servings from the affected animals, and hence human health risks. This potentially important aspect of human health risk assessment for animal antibiotics has not previously been quantified.     

The 1991 Cholera Epidemic in Peru: Not a Case of Precaution Gone Awry

The precautionary principle calls on decisionmakers to take preventive action in light of evidence indicating that there is a potential for harm to public health and the environment, even though the nature and magnitude of harm are not fully understood scientifically. Critics of the precautionary principle frequently argue that unbridled application of the principle leads to unintended damage to health and ecosystems (risk tradeoffs) and that precautious decision making leaves us vulnerable to "false-positive" risks that divert resources away from "real risks." The 1991 cholera epidemic in Peru is often cited as an example of these pitfalls of the precautionary principle. It has been mistakenly argued that application of the precautionary principle caused decisionmakers to stop chlorinating the water supply due to the risks of disinfection byproducts (DBPs), resulting in the epidemic. Through analyses of investigations conducted in the cities of Iquitos and Trujillo, Peru, literature review, and interviews with leading Peruvian infectious disease researchers, we determined that the epidemic was caused by a much more complex set of circumstances, including poor sanitation conditions, poor separation of water and waste streams, and inadequate water treatment and distribution systems. The evidence indicates that no decision was made to stop chlorinating on the basis of DBP concerns and that concerns raised about DBPs masked more important factors limiting expansion of chlorination. In fact, outside of Peru's capital Lima, chlorination of drinking water supplies at the time of the epidemic was limited at best. We conclude that the Peruvian cholera epidemic was not caused by a failure of precaution but rather by an inadequate public health infrastructure unable to control a known risk: that of microbial contamination of water supplies.     

The European Commission''s White Paper "Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy": A Review

The European Commission has proposed a radical new policy for the regulation of chemicals in the EU in the form of a White Paper. The current system has separate regulatory provisions for "new" chemicals (introduced to the market since September 18, 1981) and "existing" chemicals (on the market before September 18,1981). The proposed future policy will have a single unified regulatory system for all chemicals, which should result in better regulation of chemicals in the EU single market. It will be better because risk assessments will be targeted at the chemicals of greatest concern. Furthermore, the system will be streamlined, making regulatory decisions faster, and thus reducing the so-called burden of the past (the large number of chemicals that have never been assessed for their risks to human health or the environment). The new system incorporates the precautionary principle, which will be applied where there is an early indication of unacceptable risk or where there is undue delay in the regulatory process. Moreover, the new strategy is intended to promote greater transparency for all stakeholders.     

Assessing Potential Human Health Hazards and Benefits from Subtherapeutic Antibiotics in the United States: Tetracyclines as a Case Study

Many scientists, activists, regulators, and politicians have expressed urgent concern that using antibiotics in food animals selects for resistant strains of bacteria that harm human health and bring nearer a “postantibiotic era” of multidrug resistant “super‐bugs.” Proposed political solutions, such as the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), would ban entire classes of subtherapeutic antibiotics (STAs) now used for disease prevention and growth promotion in food animals. The proposed bans are not driven by formal quantitative risk assessment (QRA), but by a perceived need for immediate action to prevent potential catastrophe. Similar fears led to STA phase‐outs in Europe a decade ago. However, QRA and empirical data indicate that continued use of STAs in the United States has not harmed human health, and bans in Europe have not helped human health. The fears motivating PAMTA contrast with QRA estimates of vanishingly small risks. As a case study, examining specific tetracycline uses and resistance patterns suggests that there is no significant human health hazard from continued use of tetracycline in food animals. Simple hypothetical calculations suggest an unobservably small risk (between 0 and 1.75E‐11 excess lifetime risk of a tetracycline‐resistant infection), based on the long history of tetracycline use in the United States without resistance‐related treatment failures. QRAs for other STA uses in food animals also find that human health risks are vanishingly small. Whether such QRA calculations will guide risk management policy for animal antibiotics in the United States remains to be seen.     

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS IN WESTERN EUROPE: DOES CULTURAL ORIGIN MATTER?

Conventional economic analyses have not been successful in explaining differences in living arrangements and particularly the dramatic increase in the fraction of young adults living with their parents in Mediterranean Europe. This paper presents a cultural interpretation. I argue that the sexual revolution of the 1970s—by liberalizing parental attitudes—had a differential impact on living arrangements in Northern and Southern Europe on account of the closer parent–child ties in Southern Europe. Such an interpretation can easily explain both the shift in living arrangements over time and also observed North–South differentials. It receives support from data on the living arrangements of second‐generation immigrants in the United States, both in 1970 and 2000. This duplication of the European pattern in a neutral environment, with the same unemployment benefits, the same welfare code, and the same macroeconomic conditions suggests a major role for culture in determining living arrangements. (JEL: D1, J1, Z13)     

Communicating Food Risks in an Era of Growing Public Distrust: Three Case Studies

The communication and regulation of risk has changed significantly over the past 30 years in Europe and to a noticeable but lesser extent in the United States. In Europe, this is partly due to a series of regulatory mishaps, ranging from mad cow disease in the United Kingdom to contamination of the blood supply in France. In the United States, general public confidence in the American government has been gradually declining for more than three decades, driven by a mix of cultural and political conflicts like negative political advertising, a corrosive news media, and cuts in regulatory budgets. While the former approach is based on an objective assessment of the risk, the latter is driven more by the perception of the risk, consumer sentiment, political will, and sectoral advocacy. In this article, the author examines three U.S.‐based food case studies (acrylamide, bisphenol A, and artificial food colorings) where regulations at the local and state levels are increasingly being based on perceived risk advocacy rather than on the most effective response to the risk, be it to food safety or public health, as defined by regulatory interpretation of existing data. In the final section, the author puts forward a series of recommendations for how U.S.‐based regulators can best handle those situations where the perceived risk is markedly different from the fact‐based risk, such as strengthening the communication departments of food regulatory agencies, training officials in risk communication, and working more proactively with neutral third‐party experts.     

Is Risk‐Based Regulation Feasible? The Case of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs)

The polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of brominated flame retardants used extensively in an array of textiles and plastics. Initially viewed as inert and nontoxic, in recent years an emerging body of science has cast doubt on this perception. Consequently, the compounds have drawn sustained government, media, and lobby group focus in the United States and Europe, yet have taken contrasting trajectories in different risk regulation regimes. We present a longitudinal analysis of these pathways, examining the actions of legislatures, executives, courts, scientists, and pressure groups. We show that the emergence and resolution of PBDEs as a risk issue was strongly shaped by path dependency, political entrainment (inter‐institutional conflict unrelated to PBDEs), and partisan lawmaking. This raises the question of whether risk‐based principles are capable of being the foundation on which managing the potential for harm can be based—even when that harm is associated with specific objects like flame‐retardant chemicals. We conclude by reflecting on the difficult normative issues that are raised.     

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION,TURBULENCE, AND THE DYNAMICS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Starting in the late 1970s, European unemployment began to increase while US unemployment remained constant. At the same time, capital‐embodied technical change began to accelerate, and the United States adopted the new capital much faster than Europe. I argue that these two facts are related. The main idea is that if there is capital‐embodied technical change, then the unemployment rate depends critically on how obsolete the installed capital stock is compared to the frontier. In particular, European workers initially worked with relatively obsolete capital, and so they lacked the skills required to work with frontier capital. When they lost their jobs they therefore stayed unemployed for longer than their American counterparts. I find that this channel accounts for about 70% of the discrepancy between the behavior of unemployment rates in Europe and the United States.     

Bounds in Competing Risks Models and the War on Cancer

In 1971, President Nixon declared war on cancer. Thirty years later, many declared this war a failure: the age‐adjusted mortality rate from cancer in 2000 was essentially the same as in the early 1970s. Meanwhile the age‐adjusted mortality rate from cardiovascular disease fell dramatically. Since the causes that underlie cancer and cardiovascular disease are likely dependent, the decline in mortality rates from cardiovascular disease may partially explain the lack of progress in cancer mortality. Because competing risks models (used to model mortality from multiple causes) are fundamentally unidentified, it is difficult to estimate cancer trends. We derive bounds for aspects of the underlying distributions without assuming that the underlying risks are independent. We then estimate changes in cancer and cardiovascular mortality since 1970. The bounds for the change in duration until death for either cause are fairly tight and suggest much larger improvements in cancer than previously estimated.     

STOCHASTIC GROWTH IN THE UNITED STATES AND EURO AREA

This paper estimates, using data from the United States and the Euro Area, a two‐country stochastic growth model in which both neutral and investment‐specific technology shocks are nonstationary but cointegrated across economies. The results point to large and persistent swings in productivity, both favorable and adverse, originating in the United States but not transmitted to the Euro Area. More specifically, the results suggest that while the Euro Area missed out on the period of rapid investment‐specific technological change enjoyed in the United States during the 1990s, it also escaped the stagnation in neutral technological progress that plagued the United States in the 1970s.     

Ambient Asbestos Fiber Concentrations and Long‐Term Trends in Pleural Mesothelioma Incidence between Urban and Rural Areas in the United States (1973–2012)

Over the past 40 years, measured ambient asbestos concentrations in the United States have been higher in urban versus rural areas. The purpose of this study was to determine whether variations in ambient asbestos concentrations have influenced pleural mesothelioma risk in females (who generally lacked historic occupational asbestos exposure relative to males). Male pleural mesothelioma incidence trends were analyzed to provide perspective for female trends. Annual age‐adjusted incidence rates from 1973 to 2012 were obtained from the SEER 9, 13, and 18 databases for urban and rural locations, and standardized rate ratios were calculated. Female rural rates exceeded urban rates in almost half of the years analyzed, although the increases were not statistically significant, which is in line with expectations if there was no observable increased risk for urban locations. In contrast, male urban rates were elevated over rural rates for nearly all years examined and were statistically significantly elevated for 22 of the 40 years. Trend analyses demonstrated that trends for females remained relatively constant over time, whereas male urban and rural incidence increased into the 1980s and 1990s, followed by a decrease/leveling off. Annual female urban and rural incidence rates remained approximately five‐ to six‐fold lower than male urban and rural incidence rates on average, consistent with the comparatively increased historical occupational asbestos exposure for males. The results suggest that differences in ambient asbestos concentrations, which have been reported to be 10‐fold or greater across regions in the United States, have not influenced the risk of pleural mesothelioma.     

Rising Earnings Inequality and Returns to Skills in the United Kingdom Labour Market*

Abstract. Since the later 1970s, earnings inequality in the United Kingdom has been rising steadily. It is argued that this rise reflects increasing returns to skills, as proxied by factors like education and occupation, while the strengthening labour market position of relatively skilled workers was also reflected in improving relative unemployment and labour force participation rates. These trends are best explained by a rise in the relative demand for skilled labour, implying that the most efficient way of restraining earnings inequality growth is through vigorous educational policies.     

Multi‐Case Review of the Application of the Precautionary Principle in European Union Law and Case Law

The precautionary principle was formulated to provide a basis for political action to protect the environment from potentially severe or irreversible harm in circumstances of scientific uncertainty that prevent a full risk or cost‐benefit analysis. It underpins environmental law in the European Union and has been extended to include public health and consumer safety. The aim of this study was to examine how the precautionary principle has been interpreted and subsequently applied in practice, whether these applications were consistent, and whether they followed the guidance from the Commission. A review of the literature was used to develop a framework for analysis, based on three attributes: severity of potential harm, standard of evidence (or degree of uncertainty), and nature of the regulatory action. This was used to examine 15 pieces of legislation or judicial decisions. The decision whether or not to apply the precautionary principle appears to be poorly defined, with ambiguities inherent in determining what level of uncertainty and significance of hazard justifies invoking it. The cases reviewed suggest that the Commission's guidance was not followed consistently in forming legislation, although judicial decisions tended to be more consistent and to follow the guidance by requiring plausible evidence of potential hazard in order to invoke precaution.     

The physician manager in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union

The physician manager feels hassled. There are increasing budgetary restraints, concerns over the appropriateness of resource utilization, and steadily increasing worry over governmental bureaucracy. In addition, there are concerns over patient satisfaction and increasing dissatisfaction by health care personnel. For all of this, the physician manager feels responsible. Sound familiar? Except that this physician manager is in one of the countries behind what formerly was called the "Iron Curtain," in Central and Eastern Europe or in one of the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union. Despite the striking political, economic, social, and organizational issues currently present, many of the problems faced by the physician manager in Central and Eastern Europe and in the New Independent States are remarkably similar to those encountered in the United States and Western Europe.     

Interstitial Lung Diseases in the U.S. Mining Industry: Using MSHA Data to Examine Trends and the Prevention Effects of Compliance with Health Regulations, 1996–2015

Given the recent increase in dust‐induced lung disease among U.S. coal miners and the respiratory hazards encountered across the U.S. mining industry, it is important to enhance an understanding of lung disease trends and the organizational contexts that precede these events. In addition to exploring overall trends reported to the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the current study uses MSHA's enforcement database to examine whether or not compliance with health regulations resulted in fewer mine‐level counts of these diseases over time. The findings suggest that interstitial lung diseases were more prevalent in coal mines compared to other mining commodities, in Appalachian coal mines compared to the rest of the United States, and in underground compared to surface coal mines. Mines that followed a relevant subset of MSHA's health regulations were less likely to report a lung disease over time. The findings are discussed from a lung disease prevention strategy perspective.     

Geographic Distributions of Extreme Weather Risk Perceptions in the United States

Weather and climate disasters pose an increasing risk to life and property in the United States. Managing this risk requires objective information about the nature of the threat and subjective information about how people perceive it. Meteorologists and climatologists have a relatively firm grasp of the historical objective risk. For example, we know which parts of the United States are most likely to experience drought, heat waves, flooding, snow or ice storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. We know less about the geographic distribution of the perceived risks of meteorological events and trends. Do subjective perceptions align with exposure to weather risks? This question is difficult to answer because analysts have yet to develop a comprehensive and spatially consistent methodology for measuring risk perceptions across geographic areas in the United States. In this project, we propose a methodology that uses multilevel regression and poststratification to estimate extreme weather and climate risk perceptions by geographic area (i.e., region, state, forecast area, and county). Then we apply the methodology using data from three national surveys (n = 9,542). This enables us to measure, map, and compare perceptions of risk from multiple weather hazards in geographic areas across the country.