Optimal discretion in asylum lawmaking

Optimal Discretion in the Application of Rules

Discretion is examined as a feature of the design of rule-guided systems. That is, given that rules have to be administered by some group of persons, called adjudicators, and given that their goals may be different from society’s (or a relevant organization’s), when is it socially desirable to allocate discretionary authority to the adjudicators and, if so, to what extent? The answer reflects a...

Domestic Violence Lawmaking in Asia: Some Innovative Trends in Feminist Lawmaking

Domestic violence lawmaking intersects global human rights norms and domestic women's movements. Domestic violence is both a global and local phenomenon. The World Bank argues that domestic violence accounts for one in five lost years in women aged 15-44. The costs range from direct expenses such as medical care and social services to productivity and labor market costs to the psychological tol...

Lawmaking 2.0

A crowdsourcing idea campaign aiming at evaluating and editing a draft for the new Law on Education was run in Russia in May August 2010. We developed an original crowdsourcing platform and organized collaboration of more than 500 participants. 95 original versions of the Law items were created. 23 of them were approved by the community and graduated. The mechanism proved to be effective as a t...

Irreversible investment, managerial discretion and optimal capital structure

We explore the significance of employee compensation and alternative (reservation) income on investment timing, endogenous default, yield spreads and capital structure. In a real-options setting, a manager’s incentive to under(over)invest in a project is associated to labor income he has to forego in order to work on the project, the manager’s salary, his stake on the project’s equity capital a...

Traditional Knowledge and Global Lawmaking