Publisher Description

This book will become the bible of regulatory reform. No broad, authoritative treatment of the subject has been available for many years except for Alfred Kahn's Economics of Regulation (1970). And Stephen Breyer's book is not merely a utilitarian analysis or a legal discussion of procedures; it employs the widest possible perspective to survey the full implications of government regulation-economic, legal, administrative, political-while addressing the complex problems of administering regulatory agencies.

Only a scholar with Judge Breyer's practical experience as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee could have accomplished this task. He develops an ingenious original system for classifying regulatory activities according to the kinds of problems that have called for, or have seemed to call for, regulation; he then examines how well or poorly various regulatory regimes remedy these market defects. This enables him to organize an enormous amount of material in a coherent way, and to make significant and useful generalizations about real-world problems.

Among the regulatory areas he considers are health and safety; environmental pollution, trucking, airlines, natural gas, public utilities, and telecommunications. He further gives attention to related topics such as cost-of-service ratemaking, safety standards, antitrust, and property rights. Clearly this is a book whose time is here-a veritable how-to-do-it book for administration deregulators, legislators, and the judiciary; and because it is comprehensive and superbly organized, with a wealth of highly detailed examples, it is practical for use in law schools and in courses on economics and political science.

Notes

The theories developed in this book undergird many of the deregulation reforms achieved over the past five years. They will have an even greater influence on the direction of regulation in the decade to come. -- Lloyd N. Cutler This is an ambitious, impressive, and, I think, important book. -- Alfred E. Kahn A solid contribution to the reform of regulation, approaching the subject with the incisiveness, lucidness, and logical thinking which is a Breyer hallmark. -- Senator Paul Laxalt A book of central importance in the growing national debate over government regulation...that more than any other, is likely to shape the future course of the issue in the 1980s. -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy A superb text for instructing law students on the practical context of administrative law. -- Louis B. Schwartz

Author Biography

Stephen Breyer was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1994 to 2022. He is now Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School.

Table of Contents

Introduction PART 1: A Theory of Regulation 1. Typical Justifications for Regulation 2. Cost-of-Service Ratemaking 3. Historically Based Price Regulation 4. Allocation under a Public Interest Standard 5. Standard Setting 6. Historically Based Allocation 7. Individualized Screening 8. Alternatives to Classical Regulation 9. General Guidelines for Policy Makers PART 2: Appropriate Solutions 10. Match and Mismatch 11. Mismatch: Excessive Competition and Airline Regulation 12. Mismatch: Excessive Competition and the Trucking Industry 13. Mismatch: Rent Control and Natural Gas Field Prices 14. Partial Mismatch: Spillovers and Environmental Pollution 15. Problems of a Possible Match: Natural Monopoly and Telecommunications PART 3: Practical Reform 16. From Candidate to Reform 17. Generic Approaches to Regulatory Reform Appendix 1: The Regulatory Agencies Appendix 2: A Note on Administrative Law Further Reading Notes Index

Review

An excellent summary of regulatory practice and policy… It tells us how regulation works, when it fails, where it should be changed, and what to do to change it. * American Political Science Review *
The theories developed in this book undergird many of the deregulation reforms achieved over the past five years. They will have an even greater influence on the direction of regulation in the decade to come. -- Lloyd N. Cutler
This is an ambitious, impressive, and, I think, important book. -- Alfred E. Kahn
A book of central importance in the growing national debate over government regulation…that more than any other, is likely to shape the future course of the issue in the 1980s. -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy
A solid contribution to the reform of regulation, approaching the subject with the incisiveness, lucidness, and logical thinking which is a Breyer hallmark. -- Senator Paul Laxalt
A superb text for instructing law students on the practical context of administrative law. -- Louis B. Schwartz

Promotional

The theories developed in this book undergird many of the deregulation reforms achieved over the past five years. They will have an even greater influence on the direction of regulation in the decade to come. -- Lloyd N. Cutler This is an ambitious, impressive, and, I think, important book. -- Alfred E. Kahn A solid contribution to the reform of regulation, approaching the subject with the incisiveness, lucidness, and logical thinking which is a Breyer hallmark. -- Senator Paul Laxalt A book of central importance in the growing national debate over government regulation...that more than any other, is likely to shape the future course of the issue in the 1980s. -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy A superb text for instructing law students on the practical context of administrative law. -- Louis B. Schwartz

Kirkus US Review

A timely if somewhat padded reprise of the basics of economic regulation - drawing upon Breyer's experience as an architect of airline deregulation in the late 1970s. A regulatory scheme, he maintains, must "match" the type of regulation it employs with the free-market defect it seeks to cure. Setting emission standards for pollution control, for example, will not be as successful as government-sold "rights" to pollute - because the former entails extraordinary administrative costs, discourages voluntary compliance, and does not distinguish between firms which can abate pollution cheaply and those which cannot. ICC regulation of prices and entry in the trucking industry is another mismatch: such controls, appropriate for natural monopolies like electricity or telecommunications, merely muck up a structurally competitive industry like trucking. Correspondingly, Breyer dismisses as tangential such "generic" attempts at regulatory reform as the legislative veto or increased consumer-input in agency decision-making. Rather, reform must proceed case by case, industry by industry - guided by consistently applied economic analysis, not by political pressures or institutional concepts. Breyer hasn't succumbed to deregulation fever altogether: he admits, for instance, the uncertain strength of the case for deregulation of the long-distance telephone industry. But he is full of awe at the efficiency of the free market; and citing the high prices, lessened competition, and occasional shortages which result from misguided regulation, he emphatically places the burden of proof on those who would tinker with the workings of laissez-faire. Approximately half the book is thesis - the principles of regulation; half, an industry-by-industry rundown (most interesting, by far, as regards the airlines). And its very compendiousness is a burden. But it does provide a report on the thinking and activity in the deregulation movement - as regards everything from seat belts to saccharin. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review Quote

This is an ambitious, impressive, and, I think, important book.

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