Kategoria BISAC: Business & Economics >> Government & Business

During the 1970s and early 1980s utility regulators moved from largely unintrusive regulatory practices towards more aggressive and intrusive strategies. This study explores the reasons for the change and examines the trade-offs involved between seeking fairness to customers and efficiency of operations as primary goals of regulatory policies. An extended case study of the California Public Utilities Commission's conservation policies and utility programs from 1975 to 1984 is used to test theoretical explanations of interventionism. In a look toward the future of interventionist regulatory...

In this volume the leading scholars and practitioners in the field provide a comprehensive, in-depth examination of trends in privatization throughout the world. Focusing primarily on the experiences of seventeen countries--including developing countries, advanced industrial nations, and socialist states--the book explores theoretical approaches toward the issues inherent in privatization and deregulation, specifies techniques for successful privatization, and examines the cost-benefits and limits of privatization policies. The contributors then present a series of twenty detailed case...

America has entered its second century of antitrust law. The United States has come through the 1980s of laissez faire when antitrust had its lowest profile since the Hoover days, lawyers advised clients that anything goes, and theorists justified non-enforcement of the law by Chicago School economics--the claim that antitrust exists only to create efficiency and that business freedom creates efficiency. Meanwhile, the European Community has a developing body of antitrust law. It rejects the Chicago School as ignoring market realities, and it incorporates into its law values of...

This groundbreaking study is the first to apply an analytical model derived from the interest-group theory of regulation to the study of antitrust law and policy. The application of this model which stresses that government intervention in the economy will always benefit some political groups at the expense of others to the analysis of antitrust enables Shughart both to identify important trends in the antitrust arena and demonstrate which groups have benefited most from antitrust legislation. His analysis clearly shows that consumer welfare is often not enhanced by antitrust suits or...

Changes within European telecommunication systems have been analyzed by the author with the purpose of exploring the social, political, and economic conditions that will determine the emergence of a new continental communication infrastructure by 1992. Alfred L. Thimm examines the commonly neglected institutional factors that have shaped the different responses of British, French, and German political and economic elites to both technological changes and the European Community's telecommunication strategy. The concepts of political economy are applied to explore the views and vested...

Many lament the difficulty of siting hazardous waste facilities that are intended to benefit the public at large but are locally unwanted. Many label local opposition as purely self-interested; as simply a function of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) syndrome. Drawing upon the experience of states trying to site new low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities, Mary English argues that we need to think harder and look deeper, to understand--and, possibly, solve--the siting dilemma.

The 1980 Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act ushered in a new era in low-level radioactive waste...

William Tye draws on his large body of work in the area of railroad deregulation to address specific economic problems associated with deregulation. He elucidates principles that can be applied to any major industry entering the competitive marketplace--particularly telecommunications and other utilities, including gas and electric. Tye has updated and revised his previous articles and structured them into an integrated framework. Each section addresses a major issue and can be read on a stand-alone basis. By providing appropriate economic models and rules for successful transition, this...

This practical book guides the reader through Superfund Law. Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, which established a national program for cleaning up the nation's abandoned and uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. Superfund changed the way the United States conducts business by imposing substantial liability on present and past owners and operators of contaminated sites and on generators and transporters of hazardous substances to those sites. By examining the Superfund liability scheme, Fogleman provides businesses and...

Written by specialists in law and economics, this book studies the role of liability rules in an effort to illustrate the possible consequences of statutory tampering with them. The contributors explain how statutory and common law liability rules evolved, how they work in current practice, and how changes in rules can alter economic outcomes in significant and unintended ways. Although price theory is the primary analytical tool employed in the study, the contributors also provide a wealth of institutional detail intended to illuminate the structure and operation of forces at work when...