Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation

by Edited by Edward J. Balleisen , David A. Moss

• ISBN13: 9780521280532
• ISBN10: 0521280532
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-09
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs, and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Beyond Market Failure

Government failure vs. market failure: principles of regulation

Effective regulation through credible cost-benefit analysis: the opportunity costs of superfund

From 'state interference' to the 'return to the market': the rhetoric of economic regulation from the old Gilded Age to the new

Lessons from Europe: some reflections on the European Union and the regulation of business

Confidence games: how does regulation constitute markets?

Beyond the Economic Theory of Politics

The end of special interests theory and the beginning of a more positive view of democratic politics

Public choice: a critical reassessment

The paranoid style in the study of American politics

Law, policy, and cooperation

Beyond Command and Control

What opportunity is knocking? Regulating corporate governance in the United States

Taxation as a regulatory tool: lessons from environmental taxes in Europe

Redesigning regulation: a case study from the consumer credit market

Origins and regulatory consequences of the subprime crisis

Prospects for economic 'self-regulation' in the United States: an historian's view from the early twenty-first century

Deregulation theories in a litigious society: American antitrust and tort

Markets in the shadow of the state: an appraisal of deregulation and implications for future research

Conclusion

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