Libertarian Resources

Ludwig von Mises Institute put a valuable set of libertarian literature, including back issues of Liberty magazine online.

Book: Fundamentals of Intellectual Property

Fundamentals of Intellectual Property: Cases & Materials; Thomas G. Field Jr. (Franklin Pierce Law Center)

Abstract: The PDF is approximately the 20th revision of a conventional 470 pp. casebook. It has been used twice annually in 3-semester-hour survey courses since 1999. Except for a few years when it was published by Carolina Academic Press, it has been revised each semester. This edition will be used in the spring 2010.

The casebook, intended to serve the needs of legal specialists as well as generalists, flags common themes and critical distinctions among IP components. Over long spans, much that is truly fundamental has been constant, and many current IP debates still center on issues raised in the 1800s and earlier. The goal is to present the most important and durable aspects of the law. Pursuit of that objective has been facilitated by ongoing discussions with colleagues, current and former students and others similarly engaged.

Besides patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks, brief attention is given to domain names and rights of publicity. Remedies are considered pervasively. Preemption and speech issues are treated separately as well as pervasively.

Organization and contents are informed by over thirty-five years experience with the subject matter and students at every level of technical and legal sophistication. A relatively complete table of cases is included but no index – the latter being unnecessary when the file can be searched digitally. Use of Roger E. Schecter’s comprehensive statutory supplement (West) or equivalent is suggested.

Paperback copies may be purchased for about $20.00 from a Concord, NH publisher (email author for details). A three-color cover is available, so the PDF can also be printed elsewhere for royalty-free, non profit use. The author appreciates being advised and will alert users to supplemental online materials.

Keywords: intellectual property, casebook, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, domain names, rights of publicity, commercial speech, preemption

Paper: Social Security and Retirement

Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: The Relationship to Youth Employment, Introduction and Summary. By: Jonathan Gruber, Kevin Milligan, David A. Wise; NBER Working Paper No. 14647; Issued in January 2009

The authors challenge the fixed-job argument, the argument that says old workers are better to retire soon to create jobs for young workers.

Abstract: This is the introduction and summary to the fourth phase of an ongoing project on Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World. The first phase described the retirement incentives inherent in plan provisions and documented the strong relationship across countries between social security incentives to retire and the proportion of older persons out of the labor force. The second phase documented the large effects that changing plan provisions would have on the labor force participation of older workers. The third phase demonstrated the consequent fiscal implications that extending labor force participation would have on net program costs—reducing government social security benefit payments and increasing government tax revenues.

This volume presents the results of analyses of the relationship between the labor force participation of older persons and the labor force participation of younger persons in twelve countries. Why countries introduced plan provisions that encouraged older persons to leave the labor force is unclear. After the fact, it is now often claimed that these provisions were introduced to provide more jobs for the young, assuming that fewer older persons in the labor force would open up more job opportunities for the young. Now, the same reasoning is often used to argue against efforts in the same countries to reduce or eliminate the incentives for older persons to leave the labor force, claiming that the consequent increase in the employment of older person would reduce the employment of younger persons. The validity of such claims is addressed in this volume

Paper: Enacting Constitutionalism

Enacting Constitutionalism: The Origins of Independent Judicial Institutions in Latin America
Andrea Pozas-Loyo and Julio Ríos-Figueroa; Comparative Politics, April 2010

The authors ask this bold question: “When and why can we expect constitution-making processes to produce an institutional framework that formally serves constitutionalism?”

They “distinguish constitution-making processes controlled by one cohesive and organized political group (unilateral) from processes controlled by at least two different political groups (multilateral.)”

Their hypothesis is “multilateral constitution-making processes tend to establish institutional frameworks consistent with constitutionalism.”

They find that “Based on an original database covering eighteen [Latin American] countries from 1945 to 2005, the analysis shows that autonomous judicial councils, strong constitutional adjudication organs, and autonomous prosecutorial institutions are more likely to be created by multilateral constitutionmaking processes.”

Book: The Rational Optimism

The Rational Optimism: How Prosperity Evolve, By Matt Ridely

Summary (from this video)

I am saying:

• Things are getting better.
• And people are getting nicer.
• Everybody works for everybody else.
• A habit that started 120000 years ago.
• Exchange is to culture as sex is to biology.
• It leads to collective intelligence.
• We aint seen nothing yet.
• And global pessimists are wrong.

I am not saying:

• Everything is fine.
• Things are as good as they can be.
• Nothing is getting worse.
• Individual countries will improve.
• Feel good about bad things.

Paper: Bribes in Public Contracting

Who Bribes in Public Contracting and Why: Worldwide Evidence from Firms

By: Anna D’Souza (Economic Research Service, USDA) and Daniel Kaufmann (The Brookings Institution), March 24, 2010

Abstract: We utilize survey data from over 11,000 firms operating in 125 countries and a profit-maximizing cost-benefit framework to study the determinants of procurement bribery. About one-third of firms bribe to secure public contracts, with an average bribe of 7.9% of the contract value. Econometric estimations suggest that the demand-side of good governance (voice and democratic accountability, press freedom, transparency) and the supply-side (rule of law, government effectiveness), along with competition, significantly reduce the incidence and magnitude of bribery by firms. Multinational firms appear sensitive to reputational risks in their home countries, but also partially adapt to their host country environment, with 20% bribing in middle- and low-income countries, but only 11% bribing in OECD countries; in contrast, 36% of domestic firms bribe. Larger and foreign-owned firms are less likely to bribe than smaller domestic ones, yet among bribers, foreign and domestic firms pay similar amounts. This suggests that reputational risks – affecting the decision to bribe, not the amount – are important. The results point to potential policy measures that raise the costs and lower the benefits of bribing, e.g., public disclosure of firms that bribe, and cast doubt on conventional initiatives that may not affect profits, e.g., voluntary codes of conduct.

Keywords: governance, corruption, bribery, public contracting, public procurement