Institutional Law and Economics: The Legal-Economic Nexus

 An interesting battle is playing out over the nature, future and trajectory of the idea of capitalism in reality and in the pages of many online news formats.  In the past such as the cold war, the battle was capitalism versus communism.  It seems at one glance a straightforward battle of markets versus state planning and control and which system could better deliver benefits to people.  Many claimed that state planning and control lost after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet Union. The new battle shaping is more oriented towards which form of economic organization will best address the climate crisis and inequality more generally.  Many serious business years such as Bill Gates of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation and Larry Fink of Black Rock are stating that companies must develop zero emission plans and take leadership to make changes for example that will build inclusive and equitable growth which we will explore in detail later. These overall approaches assum

Are you awaiting the Covid-19 vaccine? A little known federal government agency, the Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority (BARDA) is behind the financing of the current crop of vaccines.  This agency, located within the large bureaucracy that is the Department of Health and Human Services is the one that signed large financial agreements with drug makers and drug manufacturing facilities as part of the so-called “Operation warp Speed”.In December of 2020, Time magazine reported that the U.S. government is on track to spend $12 billion ( https://time.com/5921360/operation-warp-speed-vaccine-spending/ ) on vaccine development. It has been noted in many articles that vaccine development represents a classic form of the diversion between social costs and benefits and private costs and benefits.  Drug companies have found that vaccines offer little private incentives for wealth creation and cost a tremendous amount of their own resources to develop.  The U.S. government, accor