The Politics of Precautionexamines the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe over the last five decades, explaining why America and Europe have often ...regulated a wide range of similar risks differently. It finds that between 1960 and 1990, American health, safety, and environmental regulations were more stringent, risk averse, comprehensive, and innovative than those adopted in Europe. But since around 1990, the book shows, global regulatory leadership has shifted to Europe. What explains this striking reversal?
David Vogel takes an in-depth, comparative look at European and American policies toward a range of consumer and environmental risks, including vehicle air pollution, ozone depletion, climate change, beef and milk hormones, genetically modified agriculture, antibiotics in animal feed, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and hazardous substances in electronic products. He traces how concerns over such risks--and pressure on political leaders to do something about them--have risen among the European public but declined among Americans. Vogel explores how policymakers in Europe have grown supportive of more stringent regulations while those in the United States have become sharply polarized along partisan lines. And as European policymakers have grown more willing to regulate risks on precautionary grounds, increasingly skeptical American policymakers have called for higher levels of scientific certainty before imposing additional regulatory controls on business.
The regulation of bank capital as a means of smoothing the credit cycle is a central element of forthcoming macro-prudential regimes internationally. For such regulation to be effective in ...controlling the aggregate supply of credit it must be the case that: (i) changes in capital requirements affect loan supply by regulated banks, and (ii) unregulated substitute sources of credit are unable to offset changes in credit supply by affected banks. This paper examines micro evidence—lacking to date—on both questions, using a unique data set. In the UK, regulators have imposed time-varying, bank-specific minimum capital requirements since Basel I. It is found that regulated banks (UK-owned banks and resident foreign subsidiaries) reduce lending in response to tighter capital requirements. But unregulated banks (resident foreign branches) increase lending in response to tighter capital requirements on a relevant reference group of regulated banks. This "leakage" is substantial, amounting to about one-third of the initial impulse from the regulatory change.
We study whether cross-country differences in regulations have affected international bank flows. We find strong evidence that banks have transferred funds to markets with fewer regulations. This ...form of regulatory arbitrage suggests there may be a destructive "race to the bottom" in global regulations, which restricts domestic regulators' ability to limit bank risk-taking. However, we also find that the links between regulation differences and bank flows are significantly stronger if the recipient country is a developed country with strong property rights and creditor rights. This suggests that, while differences in regulations have important influences, without a strong institutional environment, lax regulations are not enough to encourage massive capital flows.
The New Global Rulers Büthe, Tim; Mattli, Walter
2011., 20110228, 2011, 2011-02-28, 20110101, c2011
eBook
Over the past two decades, governments have delegated extensive regulatory authority to international private-sector organizations. This internationalization and privatization of rule making has been ...motivated not only by the economic benefits of common rules for global markets, but also by the realization that government regulators often lack the expertise and resources to deal with increasingly complex and urgent regulatory tasks. The New Global Rulers examines who writes the rules in international private organizations, as well as who wins, who loses--and why.
We examine the capital-market effects of changes in securities regulation in the European Union aimed at reducing market abuse and increasing transparency. To estimate causal effects for the ...population of E.U. firms, we exploit that for plausibly exogenous reasons, such as national legislative procedures, E.U. countries adopted these directives at different times. We find significant increases in market liquidity, but the effects are stronger in countries with stricter implementation and traditionally more stringent securities regulation. The findings suggest that countries with initially weaker regulation do not catch up with stronger countries, and that countries diverge more upon harmonizing regulation.
Regulators in different countries and domains experiment with regulatory tools that allow organizations to adapt regulation to their individual circumstances, while holding them accountable for their ...self‐regulation systems. Several labels have been coined for this type of regulation, including systems‐based regulation, enforced self‐regulation, management‐based regulation, principles‐based regulation, and meta‐regulation. In this article, these forms of regulatory governance are classified as belonging to one family of “process‐oriented regulation.” Based on a review of diverse empirical and theoretical research, it is suggested that the family of process‐oriented regulation tends to have a positive, albeit varied, impact on organizations' performance, and the factors that shape this inconsistent effect are analyzed. Building on aspects of Parker's normative construct of “meta‐regulation,” the article explores the extent to which her innovative notion of a learning‐oriented approach to regulation might overcome some of the weaknesses of prevalent process‐oriented approaches. It is proposed that under conditions of regulatory uncertainty or entrenched and prevalent non‐compliance or both, meta‐regulation is likely to have many advantages over other forms of process‐oriented regulation. Yet realizing these advantages requires a rare combination of high regulatory capacity, a stable regulatory agenda, and a supportive political environment.
Governance became a catch-all concept for various forms of steering by state and non-state actors. While it pays tribute to the complexities of steering in poly-centred, globalised societies, its ...fuzziness makes it difficult to oversee who actually steers whom and with what means. By focussing mainly on actor constellations, the article disentangles governance into seven basic types of regulation, four of them representing public policies with varying degrees of government involvement and three depending solely on civil society (civil regulation), on businesses (industry or business self-regulation) or on both (civil co-regulation). Although each of the seven types is well known and extensively researched, they are rarely joined in a synoptic view, making it difficult to grasp the totality of contemporary governance. After introducing the seven basic types of regulation and coregulation, the article addresses the interactions between them and it adds the widely used concepts of hybrid regulation and meta-governance in distinct ways. The synoptic view provided here helps to comprehend how governmental deregulation has been accompanied by soft governmental regulation as well as "societal re-regulation". The concluding discussion emphasises that this "regulatory reconfiguration" is the cumulative product of countless, more or less spontaneous initiatives that coincide with forceful global trends. It also stresses that the various forms of regulation by civil society and business actors are not simply alternatives or complements to but often key prerequisites for effective public policies. Although the essentials of the typology developed here can be applied universally to a variety of policy issues, I focus it on how businesses are steered towards sustainable development and Corporate Social Responsibility.
Many observers have argued that the regulatory framework in place prior to the global financial crisis was deficient because it was largely “microprudential” in nature. A microprudential approach is ...one in which regulation is partial equilibrium in its conception and aimed at preventing the costly failure of individual financial institutions. By contrast, a “macroprudential” approach recognizes the importance of general equilibrium effects, and seeks to safeguard the financial system as a whole. In the aftermath of the crisis, there seems to be agreement among both academics and policymakers that financial regulation needs to move in a macroprudential direction. In this paper, we offer a detailed vision for how a macroprudential regime might be designed. Our prescriptions follow from a specific theory of how modern financial crises unfold and why both an unregulated financial system, as well as one based on capital rules that only apply to traditional banks, is likely to be fragile. We begin by identifying the key market failures at work: why individual financial firms, acting in their own interests, deviate from what a social planner would have them do. Next, we discuss a number of concrete steps to remedy these market failures. We conclude the paper by comparing our proposals to recent regulatory reforms in the United States and to proposed global banking reforms.
Nuclear transcription factor Nrf2 regulates the expression and coordinated induction of a battery of genes encoding cytoprotective and drug transporter proteins in response to chemical and radiation ...stress. This leads to reduced apoptosis, enhanced cell survival, and increased drug resistance. In this study, we investigated the role of Nrf2 in up-regulation of antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2 and its contribution to stress-induced apoptosis and cell survival. Exposure of mouse hepatoma (Hepa-1) and human hepatoblastoma (HepG2) cells to antioxidant tert-butylhydroquinone led to induction of Bcl-2. Mutagenesis and transfection assays identified an antioxidant response element between nucleotides −3148 and −3140 on the reverse strand of the Bcl-2 gene promoter that was essential for activation of Bcl-2 gene expression. Band/supershift and ChIP assays demonstrated binding of Nrf2 to Bcl-2 antioxidant response element. Alterations in Nrf2 led to altered Bcl-2 induction and cellular apoptosis. Moreover, dysfunctional/mutant inhibitor of Nrf2 (INrf2) in human lung cancer cells failed to degrade Nrf2, resulting in an increased Bcl-2 level and decreased etoposide- and UV/γ radiation-mediated DNA fragmentation. In addition, siRNA-mediated down-regulation of Nrf2 also led to decreased apoptosis and increased cell survival. Furthermore, the specific knockdown of Bcl-2 in Nrf2-activated tumor cells led to increased etoposide-induced apoptosis and decreased cell survival and growth/proliferation. These data provide the first evidence of Nrf2 in control of Bcl-2 expression and apoptotic cell death with implications in antioxidant protection, survival of cancer cells, and drug resistance.
Nrf2 activation reduces apoptosis that contributes to drug resistance.
Nrf2 binds to Bcl-2 gene antioxidant response element to control antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2 and cellular apoptosis.
Nrf2 up-regulation of Bcl-2 prevents apoptosis that leads to increased drug resistance.
Nrf2 is a potential target for reducing drug resistance.
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