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.

Royal assent, 25 April 2013. An Act to make provision about the UK Green Investment Bank; to make provision about employment law; to establish and make provision about the Competition and Markets Authority and to abolish the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading; to amend the Competition Act 1998 and the Enterprise Act 2002; to make provision for the reduction of legislative burdens; to make provision about copyright and rights in performances; to make provision about payments to company directors; to make provision about redress schemes relating to lettings agency work and property management work; to make provision about the supply of customer data; to make provision for the protection of essential supplies in cases of insolvency; to make provision about certain bodies established by Royal Charter; to amend section 9(5) of the Equality Act 2010. Explanatory notes to assist in the understanding of the Act will be available separately

Report on the significance, direction, and means of reform in regulatory regimes in member countries. Contents: 1. Why reform regulations? 2. Effects of regulatory reform 3. Supporting public policy goals 4. Strategies for successful reform.