Hundreds of independent, local, quasi-charitable microcredit societies, or $loan funds,# were lending to as many as 20% of Irish households in the mid-nineteenth century. Monitored by a central regulatory authority, funds in the system were successful in mitigating informational, moral hazard and enforcement problems, and thus operated at a surplus in a market where intermediation by the banks ...

Taking advantage of the structure of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), we study the tradeoff between efficiency and equity associated with different levels of discretionary power when delegating regulatory authority to lower levels of government. Exploiting an instrumental variables approach, we provide evidence that the benefits of the 1990 CAAA were highly localized and accrued dispro...

In 1997, Milstien, Batson, and Meaney published "A Systematic Method for Evaluating the Potential Viability of Local Vaccine Producers." The paper identified characteristics of successful vaccine manufacturers and developed a viability framework to evaluate their performance. This paper revisits the original study after two decades to determine the ability of the framework to predict manufactur...

Taking advantage of the structure of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), we study the tradeoff between efficiency and equity associated with different levels of discretionary power when delegating regulatory authority to lower levels of government. Exploiting an instrumental variables approach, we provide evidence that the benefits of the 1990 CAAA were highly localized and accrued dispro...

Manufacturers and regulators are challenged when evaluating stability of vaccines when potency is measured using a highly variable assay. Participants in the IABS Workshop on Stability Evaluation of Vaccines, a Life Cycle Approach, were offered a case study from a series of stability studies of a rabies vaccine, using the NIH potency assay. The case study was introduced with a scenario in which...

Medical Council of India (MCI) is an autonomous regulatory authority responsible for setting the standards of undergraduate as well as Postgraduate Medical Education besides certifying the availability of adequate infrastructure, clinical teaching material, and the trained workforce in the training institutes. Specifically, the Postgraduate Medical Education is governed by the MCI Postgraduate ...

The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of including cosmetic body-piercing and tattooing in HIV prevention and education. Little information about risks associated with tattoos or having one's body pierced is evident in the health promotion and disease prevention literature, particularly among adolescents, ethnic groups, and incarcerated populations. It is incumbent that pre...

The 1996 EU Council Directive 96/29/EURATOM defines a series of specific requirements related to the safe use of radiation sources and to public and occupational exposure. The implementation of these requirements is seen in comprehensive radiation protection measures undertaken at user site and in regulatory practice. The implementation of the 96/29/EURATOM in the last years in Slovenia led to ...

Physicians and other health care professionals seem well placed to play a role in the monitoring and, perhaps, in the curtailment of the trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal. They serve as important sources of information for patients and may have access to information that can be used to gain a greater understanding of organ trafficking networks. However, well-establish...

• Innovator drugs are given their own brand name and a common generic name that is shared with products certified as bioequivalent by a regulatory authority. • Characteristics—including names—that uniquely identify a seller’s product are entitled to legal protection against misappropriation. • Well-controlled studies and decades of use reveal that generic drugs approved by the Food and Drug Adm...