The Regulatory Enterprise

The use of regulation to control behavior is a defining feature of modern government, penetrating a wide range of social and economic life. This book offers a detailed study of how regulation works in practice, its legal framework, and the arguments surrounding its economic and social impact.

Research universities are critical contributors to our national research enterprise. They are the principal source of a world-class labor force and fundamental discoveries that enhance our lives and the lives of others around the world. These institutions help to create an educated citizenry capable of making informed and crucial choices as participants in a democratic society. However many are concerned that the unintended cumulative effect of federal regulations undercuts the productivity of the research enterprise and diminishes the return on the federal investment in research. Optimizing the Nation's Investment in Academic Research reviews the regulatory framework as it currently exists, considers specific regulations that have placed undue and often unanticipated burdens on the research enterprise, and reassesses the process by which these regulations are created, reviewed, and retired. This review is critical to strengthen the partnership between the federal government and research institutions, to maximize the creation of new knowledge and products, to provide for the effective training and education of the next generation of scholars and workers, and to optimize the return on the federal investment in research for the benefit of the American people.

This book is a revision of the author's text Public enterprise economics. Since the mid 1980sin the UK major structural changes have taken place in every sector of the economy to which that previous book addressed. Public ownership has been replaced by regulated private ownership and the attempt has been made to develop new modes of regulation. There is however a basic core of normative economics that is relevent regardless of how these markets are regulated and the purpose of this book is to give an up-to-date exposition of this core. This consists of the application of concepts of economic efficiency to pricing and investment decisions. The book goes on to consider the relationship between the behaviour and the performance of a firm or industry and the regulatory framework within which it operates, contrasting public ownership, the US form of rate-of-return regulation and price cap regulation as it is evolving in the UK and USA. Particular use is made of principal-agent theory to carry out both positive and normative analyses of alternative regulatory systems.

New data show that countries that regulate the entry of new firms more heavily have greater corruption and larger unofficial economies, but not better quality goods. The evidence supports the view that regulating entry benefits politicians and bureacrats.

This volume introduces readers to regulatory theory. Aimed at practitioners, postgraduate students and those interested in regulation as a cross-cutting theme in the social sciences, Regulatory Theory includes chapters on the social-psychological foundations of regulation as well as theories of regulation such as responsive regulation, smart regulation and nodal governance. It explores the key themes of compliance, legal pluralism, meta-regulation, the rule of law, risk, accountability, globalisation and regulatory capitalism. The environment, crime, health, human rights, investment, migration and tax are among the fields of regulation considered in this ground-breaking book. Each chapter introduces the reader to key concepts and ideas and contains suggestions for further reading. The contributors, who either are or have been connected to the Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet) at The Australian National University, include John Braithwaite, Valerie Braithwaite, Peter Grabosky, Neil Gunningham, Fiona Haines, Terry Halliday, David Levi-Faur, Christine Parker, Colin Scott and Clifford Shearing.

This ground-breaking book addresses the challenge of regulatory delivery, defined as the way that regulatory agencies operate in practice to achieve the intended outcomes of regulation. Regulatory reform is moving beyond the design of regulation to address what good regulatory delivery looks like. The challenge in practice is to operate a regulatory regime that is both appropriate and effective. Questions of how regulations are received and applied by those whose behaviour they seek to control, and the way they are enforced, are vital in securing desired regulatory outcomes. This book, written by and for practitioners of regulatory delivery, explains the Regulatory Delivery Model, developed by Graham Russell and his team at the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The model sets out a framework to steer improvements to regulatory delivery, comprising three prerequisites for regulatory agencies to be able to operate effectively (Governance Frameworks, Accountability and Culture) and three practices for regulatory agencies to be able to deliver societal outcomes (Outcome Measurement, Risk-based Prioritisation and Intervention Choices). These elements are explored by an international group of experts in regulatory delivery reform, with case studies from around the world. Regulatory Delivery is the first product of members of the International Network for Delivery of Regulation.