We have some exciting news!
Updates: Government and Markets
In March, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on the Tobin Project, titled "Tobin Project Coordinates 'Transformative Research' by Scholars and Policy Makers." The article offers a look at our mission and how we have brought together leading scholars and helped to generate high-impact strategic research.
Chapters from Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) were cited in a new report, "Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Door at SEC Creates Risk of Regulatory Capture" by the Project on Government Oversight.
The Tobin Project seeks applications from doctoral students and law students undertaking work related to its initiatives in Democracy & Markets and National Security.
The deadline for applications is March 1, 2013.
In June, the International Centre for Financial Regulation (ICFR), a non-profit and non-partisan research organization based in London, published a report: “The Making of Good Financial Regulation: Toward a Policy Response to Regulatory Capture.” Recognizing the import of the Tobin Project’s forthcoming work on the issue, the ICFR asked the editors of Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It to contribute an essay to the report.
April 2012: Michael Sandel discusses his new book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
On April 23, 2012, Michael Sandel (Harvard University, Government) will discuss his new book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. In the book, Professor Sandel argues that markets have not only become disconnected from morals, but have also extended too deeply into new and potentially inappropriate spheres of life. Citing examples like for-profit hospitals and advertising in schools, Professor Sandel suggests a need for setting moral limits on the reach of market-thinking.
A recent article in DukeTODAY reports on a Duke University research initiative on "Rethinking Regulation," led by Ed Balleisen (Duke University, History) and Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, with support from the Tobin Project. The article highlights the power of the Tobin Project model for catalyzing research in the social sciences:
New research emerging from the Tobin Project’s Preventing Capture initiative is now drawing interest among key policymakers in Washington D.C. In October, Tobin convened top administration officials and Congressional leaders with authors from the forthcoming Preventing Capture volume for a lively roundtable dinner to discuss how regulation can serve the public good without falling prey to “capture” by special interests. Along with six members of the U.S House of Representatives, the meet
The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) highlights the Tobin Project's Preventing Capture initiative after Tobin Project Founder David Moss offered a seminar on the topic for the Regulatory Policy Program at HKS. Speaking about the forthcoming volume, David tells the seminar audience that “The book takes a hard look at how undue influence occurs...
In June, the Tobin Project supported a two-day symposium, “Crisis and the Challenges of Regulatory Design,” as part of the Kenan Institute for Ethics’s ongoing faculty working group on the purposes and strategies of regulatory governance. Motivated by a belief that ideas matter and that the dominant approaches to regulatory policy in the United States have significant limitations, the working group was created in 2010 with the aim of generating new conceptual frameworks to improve regulatory decision-making.