Recent News

In May, the Tobin Project asked five scholar-experts from varying diciplines to respond to Elizabeth Warren's (Harvard Law School) proposal for a Financial Product Safety Commission (FPSC), which has been introduced in Congress.

America faces the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the heart of this economic turmoil has been debate about the role of regulation and deregulation both in precipitating the crisis and finding possible remedies. Given the sheer scale of federal assets now entrenched in troubled corporations, and the new administration’s ambitious reform objectives, we need more than ever a long-term reevaluation of the relationships between the market and the state.

Elections scholarship has a long and distinguished history in the social sciences, and it emerged as a full-fledged legal discipline during the 1990s. Its academic and policy significance was underscored by the tumult surrounding the 2000 presidential election, which sparked a growing interest in the field and spawned new interdisciplinary work between law professors, social scientists, and historians.

The Tobin Project asks for grant proposals from scholars who intend to undertake new, policy-relevant research that will contribute to knowledge of regulatory governance and the appropriate role of the state and markets in economic regulation. Potential research topics may address four over-arching themes: models of economic and political behavior; strategies for assessing regulatory outcomes; information flows and regulatory politics; and regulatory strategy and design.