Regulation and its reform / Stephen Breyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Breyer, Stephen G., 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Trade regulation--United States.

Trade regulation.

Industrial policy--United States.

Industrial policy.

Physical Description:

xii, 472 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1982.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 (197O). 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Preface

Contents

Introduction

I. A Theory of Regulation

1. Typical Justifications for Regulation

2. Cost-of-Service Ratemaking

3. Historically Based Price Regulation

4. Allocation under a Public Interest Standard

5. Standard Setting

6. Historically Based Allocation

7. Individualized Screening

8. Alternatives to Classical Regulation

9. General Guidelines for Policy Makers

II. Appropriate Solutions

10. Match and Mismatch

11. Mismatch: Excessive Competition and Airline Regulation

12. Mismatch: Excessive Competition and the Trucking Industry

13. Mismatch: Rent Control and Natural Gas Field Prices

14. Partial Mismatch: Spillovers and Environmental Pollution

15. Problems of a Possible Match: Natural Monopoly and Telecommunications

III. Practical Reform

16. From Candidate to Reform

17. Generic Approaches to Regulatory Reform

Appendix 1. The Regulatory Agencies

Appendix 2. A Note on Administrative Law

Further Reading

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliography and index.

ISBN:

9780674028760

0674028767

OCLC:

923109587