In 1938 the U.S. Government took under its wing an infant airline industry. Government agencies assumed responsibility not only for airline safety but for setting fares and determining how individual markets would be served. Forty years later, the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 set in motion the economic deregulation of the industry and opened it to market competition. This study by Steven Morrison and Clifford Winston analyzes the effects of deregulation on both travelers and the airline industry. The authors find that lower fares and better service have netted travelers some $6 billion in annual benefits, while airline earnings have increased by $2.5 billion a year. Morrison and Winston expect still greater benefits once the industry has had time to adjust its capital structure to the unregulated marketplace, and they recommend specific public polices to ensure healthy competition.

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.

The author discusses the question of federal preemption of intrastate transportation and the experience of intrastate deregulation in some states. He examines the issue of whether more deregulation is in the public interest and, if economic deregulation is to be retained, what form it should take. The author's summary and conclusions can be the basis for study of the effects of economic deregulation in the transportation industry. This book can be a resource for executives dealing with deregulation in such industries as: transportation, telecommunications, broadcasting, electric utilities, cable television, oil and gas, and securities and banking. Defense Transportation Journal This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the social nd economic consequences of one of America's most important infrastructure industries--transportation. Dr. Dempsey traces the legal and political movement from regulation to deregulation. He proceeds to review the empirical results of a decade of deregulation upon airlines, railroads, trucking, and bus companies, and the effects of deregulation upon the shipping and traveling public that rely upon them. The book begins with an analysis of the events that led our nation to establish a regime of economic regulation upon the transportation industry. It also examines the metamorphosis toward deregulation and focuses on several areas in which there has been a significant adverse impact, including economic efficiency, pricing, service, and safety. Dempsey's book addresses the question of federal preemption of intrastate transportation and the experience of intrastate deregulation in some states. Dempsey further examines the issue of whether more deregulation is in the public interest and, if economic regulation is to be retained, what form it should take. The book concludes with an analysis of the public interest in transportation, focusing upon the policy objectives essential in accomplishing social and economic goals beyond allocative efficiency. This book is a necessary resource for executives dealing with deregulation in such industries as: transportation, telecommunications, broadcasting, electric utilities, cable television, oil and gas, and securities and banking.

Financial regulation is often framed as a question of economic efficiency. This paper, by contrast, puts the distributive implications of financial regulation center stage. We develop a model in which the financial sector benefits from risk-taking by earning greater expected returns. However, risktaking also increases the incidence of large losses that lead to credit crunches and impose negative externalities on the real economy. We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risktaking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties. A regulator has to trade off efficiency in the financial sector, which is aided by deregulation, against efficiency in the real economy, which is aided by tighter regulation and a more stable supply of credit. We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to the financial sector at the expense of the rest of the economy.

Beginning with railroad regulation in 1887 and continuing for eight decades, the U.S. Federal Government expanded its regulatory scope to cover key transportation, telecommunications and energy sectors. In the last quarter of the 20th century this long-term trend was abruptly and dramatically reversed as important sectors of the U.S. economy were deregulated. This important collection charts the causes and effects of this process. Alongside an original introduction, the carefully selected analyses provided in this volume consider the political and economic forces behind the elimination of regulatory authority and describe how this historic turnaround took place. Did the cessation of government control enable vigorous competition or promote stifling monopolies? The answers found here will inform debates surrounding the regulation of financial and information markets. This collection will be a valuable source of reference for anyone interested in the process of deregulation.