Economic Development And Regulation

In Regulation and Development Jean-Jacques Laffont provides the first theoretical analysis of regulation of public services for developing countries. He shows how the debate between price-cap regulation and cost of service regulation is affected by the characteristics of less developed countries (LDCs) and offers a positive theory of privatization that stresses the role of corruption. He develops a new theory of regulation with limited enforcement capabilities and discusses the delicate issue of access pricing in view of LDC's specificities. In the final chapter he proposes a theory of separation of powers which reveals one of the many vicious circles of underdevelopment made explicit by the economics of information. Based on organization theory and history, and using simple empirical tests wherever possible, Professor Laffont offers a comprehensive evaluation of the different ways to organize the regulatory institutions and opens up a rich new research agenda for development studies.

Industrialist John Paul Getty famously quipped, “The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.” Throughout history, natural resources have been sources of wealth and power and catalysts for war and peace. The case studies gathered in this innovative volume examine how the intersection of ideas, interest groups, international institutions, and political systems gave birth to distinctive regulatory regimes at various times and places in the modern world. Spanning seven continents and focusing on both advanced and developing economies, it offers unique insights into why some resource-rich countries have flourished while others have been mired in poverty and corruption.

The Schumpeterian process of 'creative destruction' is an essential ingredient of a dynamic economy. In many countries around the world, however, this process is weakened by pervasive regulation of product and factor markets. This book documents the regulatory obstacles faced by firms, particularly in developing countries, and assesses their implications for firm renewal and macroeconomic performance. Combining a variety of methodological approaches--analytical and empirical, micro and macroeconomic, single- and cross-country-- the book provides evidence that streamlining the regulatory framework would have a significant social pay-off, particularly in developing countries that are also burdened by weak governance. The book's chapters trace out analytically and empirically the links between microeconomic policies and distortions, on the one hand, and aggregate performance in terms of productivity, growth and volatility, on the other. The volume adds to a novel but increasingly influential literature that seeks to understand macroeconomic phenomena from a microeconomic perspective, and derive the relevant lessons for development policy. Such literature is still fairly scarce in the case of industrial countries, and virtually in its infancy for developing countries.

In this paper, we relate the scope and depth of regulatory reforms to growth outcomes in OECD countries. By means of a new set of quantitative indicators of regulation, we show that the cross-country variation of regulatory settings has increased in recent years, despite extensive liberalisation and privatisation in the OECD area. We then look at the regulation-growth linkage using data that cover a large set of manufacturing and service industries over the past two decades. We focus on multifactor productivity (MFP), which plays a crucial role in GDP growth and accounts for a significant share of its cross-country variance. We find evidence that reforms promoting private governance and competition (where these are viable) tend to boost productivity. Both privatisation and entry liberalisation are estimated to have a positive impact on productivity. In manufacturing the gains are greater the further a given country is from the technology leader, suggesting that regulation limiting ...

"In association with the Belgian-Dutch Association for Institutional and Political Economy."

The past thirty years have witnessed a transformation of government economic intervention in broad segments of industry throughout the world. Many industries historically subject to economic price and entry controls have been largely deregulated, including natural gas, trucking, airlines, and commercial banking. However, recent concerns about market power in restructured electricity markets, airline industry instability amid chronic financial stress, and the challenges created by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which allowed commercial banks to participate in investment banking, have led to calls for renewed market intervention. Economic Regulation and Its Reform collects research by a group of distinguished scholars who explore these and other issues surrounding government economic intervention. Determining the consequences of such intervention requires a careful assessment of the costs and benefits of imperfect regulation. Moreover, government interventions may take a variety of forms, from relatively nonintrusive performance-based regulations to more aggressive antitrust and competition policies and barriers to entry. This volume introduces the key issues surrounding economic regulation, provides an assessment of the economic effects of regulatory reforms over the past three decades, and examines how these insights bear on some of today’s most significant concerns in regulatory policy.

This book is an exploration of arguments about the economic and social effects of the regulation of labour, and whether it is likely to be helpful or harmful to development. Authored by contributors from a variety of fields, primarily legal as well as development studies, economics and regulatory studies, the book presents both empirical and theoretical analyses of the issues. With authors from several continents, this collection is unique in that it focuses on labour regulation in poor and middle-income countries rather than industrialised ones, therefore making it a significant contribution to the field.