The convergence of national headlines and faculty research represents a unique window of opportunity for a professor’s work to gain a wider audience. Marc Law, assistant professor of economics, has the good fortune of having multiple areas of his research — the politics of federal earmarks and the political economy of regulation — among the list of currently hot topics registering on the national radar.

Earmarks have been an especially popular topic with both presidential candidates touting their aversion to pork barrel spending (McCain used the term seven times in the first two debates). The recent passing of the $700 billion bailout package has further fueled the discussion. Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who vows to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress, has drawn fire from skeptics who claimed she initially supported the “Bridge to Nowhere,” which McCain helped make a symbol of pork barrel excess.

Law, who has published a number of papers on earmarks, believes them to be a “necessary evil” in a current system that rewards elected officials who deliver narrow benefits to their constituents. “Do I like earmarks?” he asks. “No, but we need them to build coalitions and get legislation passed. It’s unfortunate that we have to accept something that’s inefficient and unsavory, but aside from bribing people in Congress, which is illegal, earmarks are the only bargaining chips available. I don’t know if Congress could exist under its current system without earmarks.”

By focusing on a specific type of earmark — the agricultural earmark — Law has shown the consequences, both intended and unintended, of pork barrel projects in his 2006 paper “The Strange Budgetary Politics of Agricultural Research Earmarks” and in a 2008 paper from the Review of Agricultural Economics titled “Earmarked: The Political Economy of Agricultural Research Appropriations.” The latter paper shows how earmarks appropriated through the USDA require far less scrutiny than more stringent research agencies such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health that recognize the importance of competitive peer review and believe that “the determination of what research activities deserve federal assistance should be made by men and women who were themselves competent in the sciences covered.”

The paper also shows how the rise of earmarking at the USDA has “reinforced the belief that decisions about the allocation of research funds need to be made by experts if the quality of scientific (research) is to be maintained.” He concludes that while such legislation wasn’t intended to generate opportunities for political pork, once special grant authority arose for the USDA, it “created an avenue for individual legislators to bring home narrowly defined benefits to their constituents at the cost of the population at large.”

Weighing in on a U.S. Supreme Court case
Law has conducted extensive research on various regulatory topics including the origins of state food labeling laws; the enforcement of the Pure Food and Drug Act; the emergence and adoption of occupational licensing laws; the effect of occupational licensing legislation on minorities; and the origins of truth-in-advertising laws. He has authored a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Law and Economics titled, "The Effects of Occupational Licensing Laws on Minorities: Evidence from the Progressive Era.”

In that paper, Law shows the unintended consequences of forcing certain groups to attain licenses to practice in professions ranging from medicine to cosmetology. The practice was originally thought to be an attempt to limit competition from minority groups but often ended up having no effect or a reverse one. “It had no real effect in most cases,” says Law. “White barbers (in the early 1900s) introduced these types of laws to reduce competition from black barbers. Ironically, licensing ended up giving credibility to the black barbers and actually helped reduce stereotypes.”

Due in part to his expertise in these areas, Law was asked to submit an amicus brief along with Daniel Paul Carpenter, the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government at Harvard, and Aaron S. Kesselheim, instructor of medicine at Harvard, regarding a U.S. Supreme Court case. The case of Wyeth v. Levine, in which the drug company challenges a Vermont Supreme Court decision to award Diana Levine $6.8 million, is scheduled to be heard on Nov. 3.

Levine had an arm amputated when a physician’s assistant inadvertently injected a dose of “Phenergan” (promethazine HCl), a drug to treat nausea, into an artery, leading to gangrene. The Vermont Supreme Court concluded the drug label had inadequate warnings. Wyeth argues that it could not comply with both state and federal law, claiming federal law prohibits “unilateral changes to FDA-approved labeling,” and in this case federal law preempts state product liability laws.

In the brief, Law, Carpenter and Kesselheim conclude that the Court should affirm the judgment of the Vermont Supreme Court, saying that “Congress’s refusal to preempt state failure-to-warn litigation is demonstrably wise policy.” They argue that state-law failure-to-warn litigation plays “an essential role in promoting drug safety and that significant imbalances of safety-related information are inherent in the approval of pharmaceutical products.” The outcome of the case will have a major impact on tort reform, which could make it more difficult to get a case to court and would reduce awards.