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1. Fetal Protection Policies and Corporate Liability of the US Vinyl Chloride Industry, 1974–1991

   https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306539  

   Bergen, Sadie (February 2022, American Journal of Public Health)

   In the late 20th century, fetal protection policies barred women from hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs on the pretext that if women became pregnant, their fetuses might be harmed by workplace exposure to toxic chemicals. Beginning in the 1970s, these policies set off a decades-long contest between the chemical industry, government agencies, and the judicial system over how to balance the uncertain reproductive health risks against sex discrimination. This article revives the subject of reproductive health and workplace protections through a historical case study of fetal protection policies at Firestone Plastics, a leader in the postwar vinyl chloride industry. I use formerly secret industry documents to argue that Firestone used scientific uncertainty and gender essentialism to skirt new regulatory pressures and minimize corporate liability. Ultimately, fetal protection policies stymied innovative regulatory efforts to protect all workers—not just women—from reproductive hazards in the workplace. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(2):271–276. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306539 ) 

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2. Taxation and Innovation in the Twentieth Century

   https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjab022  

   Akcigit, Ufuk; Grigsby, John; Nicholas, Tom; Stantcheva, Stefanie (June 2021, The Quarterly Journal of Economics)

   Abstract This article studies the effect of corporate and personal taxes on innovation in the United States over the twentieth century. We build a panel of the universe of inventors who patented since 1920, and a historical state-level corporate tax database with corporate tax rates and tax base information, which we link to existing data on state-level personal income taxes and other economic outcomes. Our analysis focuses on the effect of personal and corporate income taxes on individual inventors (the micro level) and on states (the macro level), considering the quantity and quality of innovation, its location, and the share produced by the corporate rather than the noncorporate sector. We propose several identification strategies, all of which yield consistent results. We find that higher taxes negatively affect the quantity and the location of innovation, but not average innovation quality. The state-level elasticities to taxes are large and consistent with the aggregation of the individual-level responses of innovation produced and cross-state mobility. Corporate taxes tend to especially affect corporate inventors’ innovation production and cross-state mobility. Personal income taxes significantly affect the quantity of innovation overall and the mobility of inventors. 

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3. The Rise of Pass-Throughs and the Decline of the Labor Share

   https://doi.org/10.1257/aeri.20210268  

   Smith, Matthew; Yagan, Danny; Zidar, Owen; Zwick, Eric (September 2022, American Economic Review: Insights)

   We study the coevolution of the fall in the US corporate-sector labor share and the rise of business activity in tax-preferred pass-throughs. We find that reallocating activity to the form it would have taken prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 accounts for one-third of the decline in the corporate-sector labor share between 1978 and 2017. Our adjustments are concentrated among mid-market firms in services, magnifying the role of the manufacturing sector and superstar firms in driving the remaining decline in the labor share. Our findings highlight the importance of tax policy when measuring factor shares. (JEL D22, E25, H25, K34, L60, L80) 

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4. Municipalization for privatization’s sake: Municipal solid waste collection services in urban India

   https://doi.org/10.1108/SBR-11-2017-0102  

   Luthra, Aman (May 2019, Society and Business Review)

   Purpose Rapid economic growth and urbanization in India have increased demand for municipal services. In response, privatization has emerged as a policy solution to a growing deficit in urban infrastructure and service provision. But, privatization assumes prior state ownership of those services. Certain waste management services, specifically doorstep waste collection, have never been truly public in the sense that private informal actors have historically provided them. The purpose of this paper is to examine the tensions and contradictions between two related policy imperatives – universal service provision and privatization – that appear to be guiding the municipalization of solid waste collection services in urban India. Design/methodology/approach Research for this paper relies on detailed analysis of key government documents (reports of various committees, regulations and laws) that have been important in defining municipal responsibilities for waste management in India from 1990 to 2016. In addition, where appropriate, research materials from the author’s doctoral dissertation fieldwork in Delhi from October 2012 to December 2013 have also been used. Findings An analysis of key policy documents revealed that the government’s efforts to document deficits in service provision ignored, and thus rendered invisible, the work of the informal sector. While a consensus on the need for universal waste collection service had emerged as early as the late 1990s, it was not until 2016 that municipal responsibility for service provision was codified into law. The rules issued in 2016 municipalized this responsibility while simultaneously opening up spaces for the inclusion of the informal sector in waste collection service provision. Originality/value This paper fills a gap in the existing literature on how policy interventions have brought the space of the doorstep into the ambit of the state such that it allows for the opening up of those spaces for the entry of private capital. Under the guise of universal service provision, the shift to municipalization and outsourcing to private corporations is not in fact privatization – service provision is already private – but involves the dispossession of informal workers and the transfer of their resource to the formal, corporate sector. 

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5. “Ashamed” to Put His Name to It: Monsanto, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, and the Use of Fraudulent Science, 1969–1985

   https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307247  

   Rosner, David; Markowitz, Gerald (June 2023, American Journal of Public Health)

   One of the most well-documented episodes of scientific manipulation and overt fraud was the scandal involving Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the 1970s and the chronic toxicity tests it conducted on behalf of Monsanto that ultimately led to the indictment and conviction of employees of IBT and the Monsanto Corporation. IBT, at the time the nation’s largest private laboratory, served a range of industries and government agencies. IBT conducted about 22 000 toxicology studies for scores of corporations, representing between 35% and 40% of all tests conducted in private labs in the country. IBT has been justly condemned for its fraudulent activities in the 1970s, but no one has looked at the relationship between the corporate funders of IBT’s research and its fraudulent practices. We use previously secret corporate documents that detail the role of IBT’s largest customer, Monsanto, which used fraudulent data to influence government. This material, revealed through legal discovery proceedings now under way regarding polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Roundup, show the long-lasting impact of Monsanto’s behavior on efforts to regulate large corporations as well as on the long-term effects on human health. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(6):661–666. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307247 ) 

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