ABSTRACT
In the New Palgrave’s entry on “regulation and deregulation,” the authors note, “Both theoretical and empirical research question the extent to which regulation can achieve the goals for which it has been promulgated” (Breyer and MacAvoy 1987:129). The disillusioned view of the promises of regulatory policies expressed in this summary judgement has, by now, become widely accepted wisdom within the economics profession.2 And public choice economists have long been arguing that regulation is the prime arena of rentseeking politics; that it largely serves to provide privileges to concentrated interest groups at the expense of the public at large.
