Regulation And Its Reform

This book will become the bible of regulatory reform. No broad, authoritative treatment of the subject has been available for many years except for Alfred Kahn’s Economics of Regulation (1970). And Stephen Breyer’s book is not merely a utilitarian analysis or a legal discussion of procedures; it employs the widest possible perspective to survey the full implications of government regulation—economic, legal, administrative, political—while addressing the complex problems of administering regulatory agencies. Only a scholar with Judge Breyer’s practical experience as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee could have accomplished this task. He develops an ingenious original system for classifying regulatory activities according to the kinds of problems that have called for, or have seemed to call for, regulation; he then examines how well or poorly various regulatory regimes remedy these market defects. This enables him to organize an enormous amount of material in a coherent way, and to make significant and useful generalizations about real-world problems. Among the regulatory areas he considers are health and safety; environmental pollution, trucking, airlines, natural gas, public utilities, and telecommunications. He further gives attention to related topics such as cost-of-service ratemaking, safety standards, antitrust, and property rights. Clearly this is a book whose time is here—a veritable how-to-do-it book for administration deregulators, legislators, and the judiciary; and because it is comprehensive and superbly organized, with a wealth of highly detailed examples, it is practical for use in law schools and in courses on economics and political science.

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.

Regulation has become a front-page topic recently, often referenced by politicians in conjunction with the current state of the U.S. economy. Yet despite regulation’s increased presence in current politics and media, The Politics of Regulatory Reform argues that the regulatory process and its influence on the economy is misunderstood by the general public as well as by many politicians. In this book, two experienced regulation scholars confront questions relevant to both academic scholars and those with a general interest in ascertaining the effects and importance of regulation. How does regulation impact the economy? What roles do politicians play in making regulatory decisions? Why do politicians enact laws that require regulations and then try to hamper agencies abilities to issue those same regulations? The authors answer these questions and untangle the misperceptions behind regulation by using an area of regulatory policy that has been underutilized until now. Rather than focusing on the federal government, Shapiro and Borie-Holtz have gathered a unique dataset on the regulatory process and output in the United States. They use state-specific data from twenty-eight states, as well as a series of case studies on regulatory reform, to question widespread impressions and ideas about the regulatory process. The result is an incisive and comprehensive study of the relationship between politics and regulation that also encompasses the effects of regulation and the reasons why regulatory reforms are enacted.

As an experiment in reconnecting academia to the broader democracy, this work is designed to invigorate public policy debate by rededicating academic work to the pursuit of solutions to society's great problems.

This study into regulatory reform shows that technological impacts on the economic benefits and costs of regulation and a deeper understanding of the social effects of the regulatory institution are driving policymakers to question the familiar and to propose daring changes.

Regulation has become a front-page topic recently, often referenced by politicians in conjunction with the current state of the U.S. economy. Yet despite regulation's increased presence in current politics and media, The Politics of Regulatory Reform argues that the regulatory process and its influence on the economy is misunderstood by the general public as well as by many politicians. In this book, two experienced regulation scholars confront questions relevant to both academic scholars and those with a general interest in ascertaining the effects and importance of regulation. How does regulation impact the economy? What roles do politicians play in making regulatory decisions? Why do politicians enact laws that require regulations and then try to hamper agencies abilities to issue those same regulations? The authors answer these questions and untangle the misperceptions behind regulation by using an area of regulatory policy that has been underutilized until now. Rather than focusing on the federal government, Shapiro and Borie-Holtz have gathered a unique dataset on the regulatory process and output in the United States. They use state-specific data from twenty-eight states, as well as a series of case studies on regulatory reform, to question widespread impressions and ideas about the regulatory process. The result is an incisive and comprehensive study of the relationship between politics and regulation that also encompasses the effects of regulation and the reasons why regulatory reforms are enacted.

Tackles the important issue of how to regulate firms with market power.

Breaking the Vicious Circle is a tour de force that should be read by everyone who is interested in improving our regulatory processes. Written by a highly respected federal judge, who obviously recognizes the necessity of regulation but perceives its failures and weaknesses as well, it pinpoints the most serious problems and offers a creative solution that would for the first time bring rationality to bear on the vital issue of priorities in our era of limited resources.