2017-2018 Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2017-2018 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

LAW - 872 Regulatory Law and Policy


(2 hrs.)

Considers business regulation as a way to address market failures, including natural monopoly, externalities, or problems arising from costly or asymmetric information. The course focuses on pros and cons of alternative strategies for dealing with each type of market failure, including rate (price) regulation, incentive regulation (price caps), entry regulation, and deregulation in favor of competition. Although the course will employ economic analysis to evaluate how well various regulatory strategies solve market failures, it will go beyond the economics to look at the political and legal constraints limiting agency discretion and the way those constraints have changed over time. It also will analyze the costs and benefits of alternative strategies for addressing distributional issues like lifeline rates and universal service.