The U.S. military and others worldwide have undergone a rapid evolution in the numbers, sophistication and lethality of the robotic weaponry that they deploy to the battlefield. The rate of transformation in the field of robotics and weapons technology raises numerous questions about what legal considerations should be made as we approach the step beyond remotely controlled drone weaponry to fu...

This article examines the timorous courtship between public health law and evidence-based policy. Legislation, in the form of direct prescriptions or proscriptions on behaviour, is perhaps the most powerful tool available to the public health policymaker. Increasingly, the same policymakers have striven to ensure that interventions are based soundly on a secure evidence base. The modern mantra ...

Discretionary policymakers cannot manage private-sector expectations and cannot coordinate the actions of future policymakers. As a consequence, expectations traps and coordination failures can occur and multiple equilibria can arise. To utilize the explanatory power of models with multiple equilibria it is first necessary to understand how an economy arrives to a particular equilibrium. In thi...

As a policymaker, the central bank both observes and shapes the economy. The central bank scrutinizes market activity to assess the state of the economy, and its policy strongly shapes market outcomes. When transparency allows the central bank to shape the economy more effectively, it may also cause the informational role of the economic aggregate to deteriorate. This paper presents a simple mo...

The names Milton Friedman and John Taylor are associated with different monetary policy rules; but, as shown in this paper, the difference between their perceptions of how the economy works is not great. The monetary policy rules advanced by Taylor and Friedman are compared by linking the rules to the two economists’ underlying views about nominal rigidity, the source of trade-offs, the sources...

When the choice of the nominal anchor and timing of inflation stabilization is analyzed with models of political business cycles, there is room for political opportunism of policymakers. The different business cycles associated with exchange rate-based (ERBS) and money-based stabilizations (MBS) imply that the decision regarding the timing and nominal anchor of stabilization may be affected by ...

Key Data Findings. (1) From March 2012 to March 2013, rural enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) and other prepaid plans increased by over 200,000 enrollees, to more than 1.9 million. (2) Preferred provider organization (PPO) plan enrollment increased to nearly one million enrollees, accounting for more than 51% of the rural MA market (up from 48% in March 2012). (3) Health maintenance organiz...