On April 23, 2012, Michael Sandel (Harvard University, Government) will discuss his new book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. In the book, Professor Sandel argues that markets have not only become disconnected from morals, but have also extended too deeply into new and potentially inappropriate spheres of life. Citing examples like for-profit hospitals and advertising in schools, Professor Sandel suggests a need for setting moral limits on the reach of market-thinking.
"The most important decisions a scholar makes are what problems to work on." - Professor James Tobin (1918-2002)
Updates: Government and Markets
April 2012: Michael Sandel discusses his new book, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
A recent article in DukeTODAY reports on a Duke University research initiative on "Rethinking Regulation," led by Ed Balleisen (Duke University, History) and Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, with support from the Tobin Project. The article highlights the power of the Tobin Project model for catalyzing research in the social sciences:
New research emerging from the Tobin Project’s Preventing Capture initiative is now drawing interest among key policymakers in Washington D.C. In October, Tobin convened top administration officials and Congressional leaders with authors from the forthcoming Preventing Capture volume for a lively roundtable dinner to discuss how regulation can serve the public good without falling prey to “capture” by special interests. Along with six members of the U.S House of Representatives, the meet
The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) highlights the Tobin Project's Preventing Capture initiative after Tobin Project Founder David Moss offered a seminar on the topic for the Regulatory Policy Program at HKS. Speaking about the forthcoming volume, David tells the seminar audience that “The book takes a hard look at how undue influence occurs...
In June, the Tobin Project supported a two-day symposium, “Crisis and the Challenges of Regulatory Design,” as part of the Kenan Institute for Ethics’s ongoing faculty working group on the purposes and strategies of regulatory governance. Motivated by a belief that ideas matter and that the dominant approaches to regulatory policy in the United States have significant limitations, the working group was created in 2010 with the aim of generating new conceptual frameworks to improve regulatory decision-making.
Following the passage of the Affordable Care Act in Spring 2010 and building on two cross-disciplinary workshops held since 2009, the Behavioral and Institutional Regulation working group met in April to examine new regulatory approaches to the health-insurance market.
The Tobin Project is pleased to announce the 2011-2012 recipients of its Democracy & Markets graduate student fellowships. With thirteen grantees in seven different disciplines, the Tobin Project’s network of aspiring scholars is growing, and the forum program is expanding to New Haven. In the fall of 2011, the Tobin Project will host monthly Graduate Student Forums in New Haven, CT for its grantees at Yale University to share their research in an interdisciplinary setting.
In May, the authors of the Tobin Project’s Preventing Capture volume met to review, critique, and discuss their chapters prior to submitting full drafts this summer. The meeting built on the energy and ideas developed at the November 2010 author meeting, which included early-stage policymaker input, and a process of revision and consultation with the volume’s co-editors and Tobin Project staff over the winter.
The Tobin Project is pleased to announce that the MacArthur Foundation has renewed its support for Tobin Project programs with a generous, multi-year grant.
In recent years, our country has weathered shared disasters of great magnitude, calling into question the resilience of a range of societal institutions, from our financial system to our oil rigs. These events suggest that proper regulation is both necessary and, in too many cases, in need of significant improvement. Yet, as policymakers aim to prevent future crises, contemporary scholarship has not offered adequate insight into where regulation can be effective and how to strengthen weak or captured agencies.