SEMINARS
Fall 2009 Risk Regulation Seminars
Comparative Effectiveness Research as Social Science: Implications for Technology Assessment in US Health Care Reform
Date: Sept 22
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Room G65, Jon M. Huntsman Hall
Speaker: David Meltzer, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Department of Economics and Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
Description: The disciplinary roots of medical cost-effectiveness analysis include several social sciences, including economics and psychology, but the influence of many core concepts of these disciplines on cost-effectiveness analysis has been modest. This is especially true with respect to social scientific insights relating to behavior, which is rarely considered in assessing cost-effectiveness. This talk will use social scientific models drawn from economics, sociology, and psychology to reexamine the social-scientific foundations of medical cost-effectiveness analysis with a special focus on the importance of behavior, including the behavior of both patients and providers. Major areas of focus will include the importance of self-selection in cost-effectiveness analysis, the influence of social networks on physician practice patterns, and the determinants of patterns of opinion leadership among physicians.
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Regulating in the 21st Century: A New Federal Environmental and Consumer Protection Agency and Other Proposals for Reform
Date: Oct 20
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Room G65, Jon M. Huntsman Hall
Speaker: J. Clarence "Terry" Davies, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
Description:
This seminar will feature a presentation by Terry Davies, a Senior
Fellow at Resources for the Future, a former Assistant Administrator for
Policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and one of the
authors of the 1970 government reorganization plan that created the EPA.
Davies has recently joined with others in concluding that the U.S.
health and environmental regulatory system has become "largely
dysfunctional" and that "new technologies, such as nanotechnology and
synthetic biology, will challenge the system even more." The solution,
he will argue in his presentation, lies in an ambitious proposal
intended to spur fundamental, rather than incremental, change in how
government responds to environmental and health challenges. Davies
proposes to reorganize six federal agencies (EPA, the U.S. Geological
Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health, and the Consumer Product Safety
Commission) into a cabinet-level "Department of Environmental and
Consumer Protection." The new Department would emphasize
cradle-to-grave oversight of industrial products, using risk assessment
and economic analysis embedded in a technology options analysis
framework, and would involve affected stakeholders in decision-making to
a much greater extent than currently. Davies' presentation will be
followed with commentary on his proposal by two discussants: E. Donald
Elliott (Yale Law School and a former EPA General Counsel) and Marissa
Golden (Bryn Mawr College and author of What Motivates Bureaucrats?).
View Proposal (PDF)
Does the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Have a Future?
Date: Nov 17
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Room F60, Jon M. Huntsman Hall
Speaker: Roberta Romano, Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law and Director, Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law, Yale Law School.
Description: Although the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) received nearly unanimous congressional support in 2002, only a few years thereafter its wisdom was increasingly questioned and its supporters had to stave off attempts to recraft the legislation. The financial crisis of 2008 has sidelined efforts to alter the legislation's most costly provision (a requirement that management certify the adequacy of its internal accounting and other controls, and that an outside auditor attest to that certification), as Congress's attention has turned to overhauling the regulatory regime for financial institutions. There is, nonetheless, much to be learned about financial regulation and SOX’s future, from an in-depth examination of the interplay of the government and private commissions created with an eye to revising the legislation, media coverage of those entities, and congressional responses. That interaction provides a map of political fault lines and assists in forecasting the prospects for recrafting SOX's certification provision. It also serves as a cautionary tale regarding significant regulation enacted in the midst of a financial-market crisis. The ongoing financial crisis has sidelined SOX, but its burdensome costs suggest that it might well, in due course, reemerge on the legislative agenda.
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Spring 2010 Risk Regulation Seminars
Obama's Regulatory Agenda: A One-Year Retrospective
Date: Jan 26
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Huntsman Hall at Wharton, room TBA
Speaker: A panel appraising the first year of regulation under President Obama
Well-being and Equity: A Framework for Policy Analysis
Date: Feb 23
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Huntsman Hall at Wharton, room TBA
Speaker: Matthew Adler, Leon Meltzer Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania
Economics and Climate Change
Date: March 23
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Huntsman Hall at Wharton, room TBA
Speaker: Gary Yohe, Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, Wesleyan University
Why the Law is So Perverse
Date: April 20
Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Location: Huntsman Hall at Wharton, room TBA
Speaker: Leo Katz, Frank Carano Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania
Commentators: Bruce Chapman, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto and Lewis Kornhauser, Alfred B. Engelberg Professor of Law, New York University