ABSTRACT
The term ‘regulation’ encompasses a wide range of different types of government intervention in markets. Examples include environmental policy, the supervision of financial markets, workplace safety legislation, and so on, as well as the type of utility/monopoly regulation with which we are chiefly concerned. Since the economic theory of regulation is concerned in large part with the common elements among these various government activities, let me begin this paper by considering some aspects of the wider theory of regulation. Then, later, I will consider developments that have more limited applicability to utility/monopoly industries.
