Regulation and Policy Books

If you are a student who have studied international law, especially international economic law, this book could give you a way where to find material sources.

This book is a collection of theses of Jackson who is the scholar who cannot be ignored before studying GATT/WTO. These theses were selected, and important in studying GATT/WTO. Before writing a thesis related to them, this book is very useful material for the researcher.

College-level collections strong in health and legal issues must have Nanotechnology: Regulation and Policy Worldwide: it's the first to provide a global assessment of legal and policy initiatives aimed at either fostering or restricting nanotechnology research, and provides a survey which considers everything from property rights and key interests to political and social influences on research. Chapters consider compliance, the impact of regulation on research approaches, and more.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Matsuura offers a global summary of nanotechnology. Giving details on various national efforts underway. Very exciting potential. However, the promise is also accompanied by some issues worth noting to researchers and investors.

One of which is the intellectual property status of nanotech innovations. To what extent can these be patented? Or, to a lesser extent of protection, can an innovation be copyrighted or a nanotech brand be trademarked? The book walks us through a quick recap of these different types of IP protection. The strongest is clearly to be able to patent your efforts. The greatest hurdle is whether simply making something or some process much smaller (i.e. "nanotech") suffices to satisfies the conditions of novelty, utility and be non-obvious to another practitioner in your field. Here, the US Patent Office and the European Patent Office have taken similar stances, saying that the mere downsizing of a process is not sufficient to make it patentable. Thus a lot of your efforts should be directed to adding a necessary non-obvious twist to your innovation.

Other sections of the book talk about government regulations. Important if you intend to deploy on an industrial scale. But for me, as an inventor in the totally different fields of antiphishing and antispam, the patent discussions were the most interesting parts of the book.

A powerful and clear combination of theoretical and practical analysis of the regulatory work, with useful insights and tools to be used and developed.

Author Malcolm Sparrow suggests something so simple about the role of government that it's revolutionary -- agencies should be in the business of finding important problems and fixing them.

Simple -- but difficult.

Anyone who works in government would tell you they solve problems all the time. But most objective looks at government show that government's primary job is to "implement programs." Those programs often deftly solve problems. Yet they leave much undone. It is the undone problems that Sparrow's book deals with.

Sparrow is an old cop, turned top-level educator. He's got a doctorate and teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is a recognized expert in results-based reform of government. Personally, he is glib and practical.

His experience with policing seems to drive his philosophy. At the crux is this quote from his mentor, Herman Goldstein:

"...policing becomes more effective if police, rather than processing 911 calls one after another and in isolation, could learn to identify underlying patterns and then fashion tailor-made solutions that prevent recurrences." (page 72)

Sparrow shows how identifying patterns and fashioning tailor-made solutions is the crux for most government -- not just police. He ampley cites examples from environmental agencies, customs, OSHA and others to show this. He tells the real-life obstacles to achieving this, too (page 112). Overall, he tells how government could do better and who's doing it.

The book implies a unique slant on deterrence. While getting tough may achieve a deterrence effect, too often it happens after the evil deed. Sparrow suggests that government deter before the deed. How? Analyze patterns of unsolved problems, then tailor interventions to deter BEFORE the problem happens. This is not to rule out enforcement punch -- just to focus it on those against whom it's most effective. He shows that it can be done using case studies.

Sparrow's thinking should appeal to the pragmatist. This book is not pie-in-the-sky theory. It blends top-level thinking and on the ground experience. If you think government could be doing better, you could do worse than picking up a copy of "The Regulatory Craft."

I came across this book when it was assigned to me in one of my MBA classes, and I thought it would be very interesting to finally read about how the FDA was created. I have a strong interest in the pharmaceutical industry and the agencies that regulate it, and the idea of a definitive 'history of the FDA' really appealed to me. From the very start, it was obvious that this book had an extrememly liberal slant, to the point that any good practices seen in the industry, or good companies within it, were completely obscured. However, I kept an open mind, and figured that the basic facts were still in order. However, I just got to the chapters regarding the Reagan years, which are perhaps the furthest back my memory goes. I was appalled by the vitriol the author spewed against all conservatives, and the conservative ideology, calling all conservatives a group of "white men" who were bound by "their anger against minorities, government, and established elites". Leaders such as Ronald Reagan were desribed as having an ideology that was "a bundle of fears and dislikes", and an "anger that holds together the radical conservatives". Now, I don't mean to say that the author isn't entitled to his opinion, but the degree to which he carries these extreme beliefs into a book that is described as a history is disturbing. I now doubt everything I've read so far, and will be looking for an unbiased account in order to get the TRUE story.

This book is one of the few ones available on the FDA that is not a polemical attack on the agency. This agency, which is short on man-power and funds, is tasked with an incredibly daunting mission, i.e. to ensure the health of most foods, drugs, and cosmetics. Hilts provides a good history of the agency, often focusing on various individuals involved at all levels, which I liked. He talks about parties affected in various ways by FDA actions, such as consumers, patients, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, politicians, etc.. The only thing I felt misssing was a little more criticism of the FDA. No institution can be perfect or be completely staffed with ideal employees, and Hilts seems to limit his critiques of the FDA to outsiders, particularly politicians and corporations, while not focusing on any legitimate internal problems. But nevertheless I highly recommend to anyone wanting an overview of this critical area of regulation and of the players involved.

As with many institutions, the FDA servers a perceived needed purpose. This book is a history of why the agency was needed and its design. It is filled with horror stories and how the FDA came to the rescue. Some of these stories even scared me as I recognized the products and or brands. The chapter "Capitalism in Crisis" reads more like a political statement against capitalism than a "FDA is out to help" statement.
What they do not say is that the FDA is the Government to the point that they can carry guns and badges. Now with the fast pace of drugs and device invention the FDA is needed more than ever. The other side of the coin is that thy have become an unwatched agency that can and does set its own rules to how a business can do their job down to describing the data field that are to be stored in their computer. Their regulations read like a phone book of conflicting statements (with no recourse). And you can be shut down on a whim if you do not follow the regulations as interpreted by their agent as they are the law.
The book contains an excellent set of notes. They are divided in to chapters. And there is a fair index. For people that like pictures there are eight pages of monochrome photographs.
The author has written several articles on medicine for various periodicals.

Hilts is a journalist so perhaps he can be forgiven for writing such a biased book, although to give him credit, he does not seem to even try to hide his bias, which makes the book a kind of comedy.
A much better (and thinner) book on the FDA is written by a former FDA regulator and a M.D., To America's Health, by Henery Miller.

Sorry the other reviewer didn't like this, but as an FDA employee when Reagan would not allow the regulation of unpasturized cheese, where the listeria bacteria consumed in it caused the deaths of dozens of babies and pregnant women, I have to agree with the author. That cheese example is just the beginning; it doesn't include the dozens children who died after it was clear that aspirin use in children with fever caused the deadly Reye syndrome and the administration refused to allow FDA to put warning instructions on the label. It does not include the dozens of children who were poisoned by pills in easy-opening containers (iron pills look like candy and overdoses not treated promptly are irreversibly fatal). This book does name courageous industry people as well as public servants. It can open your eyes to the critical role the government played in assuring the availability of penicillin during WWII and vaccines today. It is the history of germs and cures in the US in a plain-spoken format.

This is an impressive book, maybe a little too big, but a great guide to any international lawyer, the authors explain everything to the deepest point and using always historical references to explain the evolution of every subject.

I bought this book for a LLM course and it's worth every penny.

This book is the best written text on International Regulation of Trade currently available.

This book is a standard text for International Trade Law Unit at The Australian National University. It is quite adequate for this. However I find its Canadian bias towards America bashing a bit tedious at times and I think that it oversimplifies the economic analysis.

Government regulation of business is always a topic of controversy, but few people know anything about its origins. This book provides a history of the origins of government regulation in the US, by specifically focusing on four important individuals and how they shaped US regulations. Though they are important, their influence was primarily through the executive and judicial branches of the federal government. The book should have included a great legislator along with the four individuals it focused on.

The book is tedious and dry, but not difficult to read. The topic matter is well explained with lots of references, but a lot of text could (and should) have been replaced with charts, graphs, flowcharts, and timelines. I would not recommend this book as an introductory text to government regulations, but more for the well-read observer.

The book chronicles tidy snapshots of the lives and careers of 4 different men whose influence in corporate regulation remains unrivaled. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Brandeis. It is terribly unfortunate to contemporary American society that a man like Justice Louis Brandeis is not still alive and a sitting judge with the Supremes. Brandeis's intellect and legacy puts the 9 slugs currently sitting on the bench to shame.

This book tells you what foreign reporters in Japan can't and Japanese government spokesmen won't: why the deregulation Japan needs to revive its economy and society will not happen without radical, far-reaching change beyond what you've already been told.

good for anyone deeply interested in the Japanese economy and the relationships among business, politics, and the bureaucracy. However, this is a collection of essays and articles from various authors, both Japanese and non-Japanese, and the writing style can be brutally boring. However, each piece is relatively short so the readings can be done 20-30 minutes at a time. For any imsomniacs studying the Japanese economy, get this book.

The piece by Eisuke Sakakibara, vice minister for international affairs at the Finance Ministry, is a great look into the mindset of Japanese bureaucrats. Most of the other articles give good insights into small parts of the bureaucratic control over the Japanese economy, but the writing starts to get a bit repetitive by the time the book ends.

Professor LeDuc looks at trends in broadcast regulation over the decades which helps a person to see why things are as they are. He shows patterns of influence that resulted in the regulatory reasoning behind the FCC's decisions on various matters.

In talking about the early days of broadcast regulation, he says the industry had a headstart over the regulators. In fact, interested parties had daily contact with Washington D.C. lawmakers. Lobbying has always been a part of the broadcast industry.

He describes the tension between public interest and the marketplace drive for profit. Issues involving programming content are at the heart of this issue. A history of other issues in broadcast regulation history are also explained in a historical context.

This is a useful book for providing a framework on how issues evolved from one generation to the next in mass media regulation. Although it was published in the mid 1980s, it is still beneficial in supplying a broad overview of regulatory trends.

The parts I have read are fairly well written and easy to follow. This was a required text book for a MBA class.

This article may be useful if you do a scientific research dedicated to Business Incubators. I have used it for my own research. However, the most useful article that I've found is "Business incubators and new venture creation: an assessment of incubating models" by Rosa Grimaldi, and Alessandro Grandi, published in Technovation, Volume 25, Issue 2 , February 2005, Pages 111-121, also available on amazon. Another useful article is "Incubators as a small business support in Russia: contrast of university-related U.S. incubators with the Zelenograd Scientific and Technology Park", by Garry D. Bruton, published by Journal of Small Business Management - January 1, 1998. I also recommend the book "Incubators: A Realist's Guide to the World's New Business Accelerators by Colin Barrow.

The emphasis of this study, "A comparative study of two European business incubators", is on the identification and analysis of effective management practices in the management of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) support arrangements. complement the analysis. Two cases of SME support arrangements are compared: one in Finland and one in Sweden. Through the comparison of these two, the present study strives to draw a distinction between context-specific good practices and more universally applicable good practices. The cases analyzed in the empirical study are the SMIL (Foundation for Small Business Development in Linkoping) in Sweden and Spinno in Espoo, Finland. SMIL is an SME stimulation arrangement for technology-based SMEs in the Linkoping region. Spinno is a development-oriented business incubator program geared to stimulate the emergence of technology-based SMEs from universities in the Helsinki metropolitan region.

The mission of SMIL is to promote the growth and development of SMEs in the Linkoping region. Consequently, the bulk of its activities are geared to existing SMEs in the region, and take the form of business stimulation services. SMIL offers a range of both informal and formal activities. The informal activities include breakfast, lunch, and evening meetings. The formal activities are comprised of a range of training programs for competence development. The contents of the programs and activities are mostly designed to meet the needs of the participating firms. SMIL offers three types of formal business support programs, tailored to different stages in the growth and development.

The mission of the Spinno program is to catalyze the emergence of new knowledge-intensive firms from research institutes and higher education institutions (HIEs) in the Helsinki metropolitan region. Spinno seeks to accomplish this mission by organizing two annual training and consulting programs for aspiring new entrepreneurs. The bulk of the applications to the Spinno program come from participating research institutions and HIEs, but corporate spin-offs are also accepted into the program. During its six years of existence, Spinno has processed over 230 applications, of which some 150 have been accepted to the program. Of these, 100 have subsequently established a new firm. The core activity of Spinno is to maintain a six-month training and consulting pipeline for selected aspiring entrepreneurs.

For each of the case studies, the authors give a brief description, history and context, scope, objective and services, and a conclusion. Then the authors give contextual differences, similarities in management practices, configurational differences between Spinno and SMIL, conclusions, and management practice similarities between Spinno and SMIL.