WHEN considering the proposed “Ancient Forest Summit” or “Timber Summit” (word choice is significant), we should carefully segregate our hopes from our expectations. Yet I’m hopeful that the summit will increase understanding and improve policy. Here’s why. Twenty years ago my colleagues and I at Montana State University advocated market incentives and property rights as […]

AS only Nixon could go to China, perhaps only a Democratic administration can join a fight against one of the worst health laws on the books, the Delaney Clause. This provision of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed in 1958. It bans any additive in any detectable levels in processed food if […]

IN every language the term “bureaucracy” bears a crust of derision. This is no accident, for bureaucratic incentives invariably produce problems. Bureaucracies tend to replace the goals that justified their creation with actions that protect their budgets. The good news is that we can harness this fatal propensity in a way that will improve government […]