New perspectives on regulation

Abstract

New regulation shouldn’t rely on old ideas. “Since the 1960s, influential research on government failure helped to drive the movement for deregulation and privatization. Yet even as the study of government failure was flourishing, some very different ideas were sprouting in the social sciences with profound implications for our understanding of human behavior and the role of government. Some of these ideas, particularly from the field of behavioral economics, have begun to nudge their way into discussions of regulatory purpose, design, and implementation. Yet even here, the process is far from complete; and many other exciting new lines of research—on everything from social cooperation to co-regulation—have hardly been incorporated at all. Now that many lawmakers and their constituents have apparently concluded that the earlier focus on government failure went too far, it is imperative that they be able to draw on the very latest academic work in thinking anew about the role of government. This, at root, is the purpose of this book: to make the newest and most important research accessible to a broad audience.” —From the Introduction