The United Kingdom’s 2016 “Brexit” decision to leave the European Union created the opportunity for the elimination of unwarranted and excessive EU regulations that had constrained UK economic growth and efficiency.

Recognizing that fact, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson launched the Task Force on Innovation, Growth, and Regulatory Reform, whose May 2021 report recommended “a new regulatory vision for the UK.” That vision emphasized “[p]romot[ing] productivity, competition and innovation through a new framework of proportionate, agile and less bureaucratic regulation.”

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Before writing this commentary, I checked trending searches on Google over the last quarter. Among Singapore’s favourite three-letter acronyms, the top was HDB, followed by CPF and COE. That is until May 4, when the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) trumped Housing and Development Board (HDB) and Central Provident Fund (CPF).

It’s worth stressing that COEs are not the top concern of all Singaporeans. They are the top concern of a relatively vocal segment – especially recently, with COE prices crossing S$100,000 (US$75,000) and continuing to trend upwards.

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Abstract

Faculty at American colleges and universities possess an exceptional, arguably unique, combination of job security and decision authority. In addition to the protections of academic tenure, “regular” faculty at most higher education institutions exercise significant authority over important organizational policies and decisions, including product design (curriculum) and personnel matters (appointments, promotions, and dismissals). Why some faculty — and only some faculty — should enjoy rights, privileges, and protections available to virtually no other class of employees has never been adequately explained, however. This paper identifies a source of “hold-up” peculiar to academic employment associated with the joint research and non-research responsibilities of “regular” faculty and the way the higher education market values the “academic capital” of scholars. Combining surveys of governance practices with institution-level data on faculty publication rates over the periods 1900-1940 and 1975-2014, the paper presents evidence of an association between research and faculty authority over personnel decisions consistent with (though not dispositive of) the commitment function of faculty rights and privileges posited here.

Legislation to secure children’s safety online is all the rage right now, not only on Capitol Hill, but in state legislatures across the country. One of the favored approaches is to impose on platforms a duty of care to protect teen users.

For example, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have reintroduced the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require that social-media platforms “prevent or mitigate” a variety of potential harms, including mental-health harms; addiction; online bullying and harassment; sexual exploitation and abuse; promotion of narcotics, tobacco, gambling, or alcohol; and predatory, unfair, or deceptive business practices.

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According to an old English proverb, children are meant to be seen and not heard. But if we aren’t careful with new online-safety legislation, kids will be neither seen nor heard in online spaces.

There has been no shortage of stories in recent months focusing on the real harms associated with teens on social media, which the platforms have already invested in mitigating in response to market demand from parents, advertisers and teens themselves. Far less attention has been paid to the benefits that teens today enjoy in terms of increased connections and access to information that was previously unimaginable in an offline world.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week held its first informal hearing in 20 years on Section 18 rulemaking. The hearing itself had a technical delay, which to us participants felt like another 20 years, but was a mere two hours or so.

At issue is a proposed rule intended to target impersonation fraud. Impersonation fraudsters hold themselves out as government officials or company representatives in order to defraud unsuspecting consumers.

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In the age of the internet, unfounded claims can achieve widespread adoption at remarkable speed. Antitrust regulators have apparently fallen prey to this malady.

In the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and other jurisdictions, regulators have adopted the view that acquisitions of startups by large tech platforms are being used systematically to “kill” competitive threats. Other regulators assert that acquisitions by large tech platforms create “kill zones” into which startups are reluctant to enter.

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The federal government is set to award more than $42 billion in new grants to state governments this summer, with the goal of expanding high-speed internet access in areas that currently lack it.

But as this new Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program ramps up, it is crucial that states spend the money wisely.

Read the full piece here.