Deregulating Imperfect Markets

The free unfolding of market forces through deregulation and privatization has become a key issue of socio-economic policies all over the world. The policy initiatives have brought about a lively debate on the pros and cons of markets, state regulations and associational activity. The public policy debate has, however, been cut off from the related discussions in a variety of academic disciplines on the relation between institutions, markets and economic performance. As Boyer and Hollingsworth note: We are witnessing a major paradox. Governments are relying more and more upon markets in order to solve the many difficult issues which they are confronting, at the very moment when theorists are discovering that the efficiency of markets is restricted to a very small set of products.' This book is an interdisciplinary theoretical reflection on the relation between social institutions and societal cultures on the one hand and the (economic) performance of markets on the other. We will use findings and insights from different disciplines to discuss the deregulation policy program. Firstlyl, we will critical investigat on some of the assumptions that underlie these neo-liberal politics. Secondly, we will present the findings of some policy studies that have compared deregulation policies in different countries and policy fields: two policy fields taken from social policy (occupational health and safety, and vocational training) and one case study of a country that has gone far with deregulation policies, New Zealand. Thirdly, we will analyze some possibly unforeseen consequences of deregulation policies.

This book is a collection of eleven papers concerned with the effects of market imperfections on the decision-making of economic agents and on economic policies that try to correct the inefficient market outcomes due to those imperfections. As a consequence, real and financial imperfections are related : economic decisions are simultaneously affected by imperfections present both in real and financial markets. Notwithstanding the obvious fact that market interdependence is not novel, scholar interests are typically concentrated on the specific relationship among economic decisions originating from particular imperfections. This explains why, in the case of perfect financial markets, we can speak of "the" us.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. The annual cost of federal regulations in the U.S. increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008. Had every U.S. household paid an equal share of the federal regulatory burden, each would have owed $15,586 in 2008. While all citizens and businesses pay some portion of these costs, the distribution of the burden of regulations is quite uneven. The portion of regulatory costs that falls initially on businesses was $8,086 per employee in 2008. Small businesses, defined as firms employing fewer than 20 employees, bear the largest burden of federal regulations. This report shows that as of 2008, small businesses face an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, which is 36% higher than the regulatory cost facing large firms (500+ employees). Ill.

How regulatory misdirection often derailed efforts to offset market failure in the United States, and the implications for policy in developing countries.

This paper uses a model of oligopolistic rivalry in bank deposit markets to consider the implications of deposit rule deregulation and increased bank competition for bank behavior, financial market outcomes, and monetary policy. In the context of this model, it is argued that the key determinant of the amount of implicit interest paid on deposits is the amount of monopoly power available to banks, rather than the presence of or absence of ceilings on explicit deposit rates. In additon, the microeconomic framework is used as a foundation for a simple general equilibrium investigation of the implications of deposit market deregulation for market interest rates and the quantity of deposit money under alternative Federal Reserve operating procedures.