Synopses & Reviews
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 todayand#8217;s most significant concerns in regulatory policy.
Review
andldquo;Aand#160;compilation ofand#160;the writings of some of the best researchersand#160;exploring the impact of regulation onand#160;an assortment ofand#160;industries. This must-have volume providing an assessment of the economic effects of regulatory reforms over the past three decades bears on some of todayand#39;s most significant concerns in regulatory policy, and this reviewer is hard pressed to think of a better treatment of the overall topic. . . . Highly recommended.andrdquo;
About the Author
Nancy L. Rose is the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics and associate department head for economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a research associate of the NBER and director of its Program on Industrial Organization.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Learning from the Past: Insights for the Regulation of Economic Activity
Nancy L. Rose
1. Antitrust and Regulation
Dennis W. Carlton and Randal C. Picker
2. How Airline Markets Work . . . or Do They? Regulatory Reform in the Airline Industry
Severin Borenstein and Nancy L. Rose
3. Cable Regulation in the Internet Era
Gregory S. Crawford
4. Regulating Competition in Wholesale Electricity Supply
Frank A. Wolak
5. Incentive Regulation in Theory and Practice: Electricity Distribution and Transmission Networks
Paul L. Joskow
6. Telecommunications Regulation: Current Approaches with the End in Sight
Jerry Hausman and J. Gregory Sidak
7. Regulation of the Pharmaceutical-Biotechnology Industry
Patricia M. Danzon and Eric L. Keuffel
8. Regulation and Deregulation of the US Banking Industry: Causes, Consequences, and Implications for the Future
Randall S. Kroszner and Philip E. Strahan
9. Retail Securities Regulation in the Aftermath of the Bubble
Eric Zitzewitz
Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index