This paper empirically tests the bottleneck co-ownership theory presented in Boffa and Panzar (2012) by using data in the US airline industry. We present a structural model of codesharing between major airlines and regional airlines. The empirical evidence in this study supports the bottleneck...

Based on Becker, Kane, Niskanen, and Peltzman's ideas, we develop a model to explain why deposit insurance is adopted even though policymakers are aware of its pitfalls in both theory and practice. In our model, the regulator acts as both a bureaucrat and an entrepreneur to maximize his...

We examine three theories of Progressive Era regulation: public interest, industry capture, and information manipulation by the federal bureaucracy and muckraking press. Based on analysis of qualitative legislative histories and econometric evidence, we argue that the adoption of the 1906 Pure...

We present a model of efficient regulation along the lines of Demsetz (1967). In this model, setting up and running regulatory institutions takes a fixed cost, and therefore jurisdictions with larger populations affected by a given regulation are more likely to have them. Consistent with the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shown that a localized disease can be transmitted to the broader population, nationally and worldwide. This Article analyzes how to design regulation to help control that transmission. To that end, we first observe that existing healthcare regulation...

The increased burden of disclosure and governance regulations is often cited as a key reason for the significant decline in the number of publicly-listed companies in the U.S. We explore the connection between regulatory costs and the number of listed firms by exploiting a regulatory quirk: many...

This paper contrasts direct election with political appointment of regulators. When regulators are appointed, regulatory policy becomes bundled with other policy issues the appointing politicians are responsible for. Since regulatory issues are not salient for most voters, regulatory policy...

A major challenge to social theory is to explain the pattern of government intervention in the market - what we may call "economic regulation." Properly defined, the term refers to taxes and subsidies of all sorts as well as to explicit legislative and administrative controls over rates, entry,...

We propose an activity-generating theory of regulation. When courts make errors, tort litigation becomes unpredictable and as such imposes risk on firms, thereby discouraging entry, innovation, and other socially desirable activity. When social returns to innovation are higher than private...

The increased burden of disclosure and governance regulations is often cited as a key reason for the significant decline in the number of publicly-listed companies in the U.S. We explore the connection between regulatory costs and the number of listed firms by exploiting a regulatory quirk: many...

This paper discusses two pertinent issues dealing with the global liquidity crisis -- global prudential regulation reform, and reassessment of using international reserves in the crisis. We point out the paradox of prudential regulations -- while the identity of economic actors that benefited...

The article discusses the position of financial creditors in light of Regulation 2A of the IBBI (Liquidation Process) Regulations, 2016. The main theme of the article is whether the financial creditors of the corporate debtor are obligated to make such contributions

We study the impact of regulating product entry and quality information requirements on an oligopoly equilibrium and consumer welfare. Product testing can reduce consumer uncertainty, but also increase entry costs and delay entry. Using variation between EU and US medical device regulations, we...

The regulator that designs and first implements a federal regulatory program does not always have the ability to control the timing and process of how that regulatory program will, in this Symposium’s language, “exit.” As the 2016 election has demonstrated, the initiating regulator cannot...

Regulatory bundling is the ability of administrative agencies to aggregate and disaggregate rules. Agencies, in other words, can bundle what would otherwise be multiple rules into just one. Conversely, they can split one rule into several. This observation parallels other recent work on how...

The choice of whether to regulate firms or to allow them to compete is key. If the demand is sufficiently inelastic, competition entails narrower allocative inefficiencies but, also, smaller expected profits and, thus, weaker incentives to invest in cost reduction. Hence, deregulation should be...

We document a novel bidding pattern observed in procurement auctions from Japan: winning bids tend to be isolated. There is a missing mass of close losing bids. This pattern is suspicious in the following sense: it is inconsistent with competitive behavior under arbitrary information structures....

The choice of whether to regulate firms or to allow them to compete is key. If the demand is sufficiently inelastic, competition entails narrower allocative inefficiencies but, also, smaller expected profits and, thus, weaker incentives to invest in cost reduction. Hence, deregulation should be...

The choice of whether to regulate firms or to allow them to compete is key. If the demand is sufficiently inelastic, competition entails narrower allocative inefficiencies but, also, smaller expected profits and, thus, weaker incentives to invest in cost reduction. Hence, deregulation should be...

We model a market for a skill in short supply and high demand, where the presence of charlatans (professionals who sell a service they do not deliver on) is an equilibrium outcome. Under a set of plausible assumptions, reducing the number of charlatans through regulation lowers consumer surplus...

We document a novel bidding pattern observed in procurement auctions from Japan: winning bids tend to be isolated. There is a missing mass of close losing bids. This pattern is suspicious in the following sense: it is inconsistent with competitive behavior under arbitrary information structures....

We analyze how information disclosure policy affects investment efficiency in non-cooperative settings with information externalities. In a two-firm, two-period model, we characterize equilibrium behavior under policies which disclose whether investment returns exceed a predefined level. These...

"Free-market economists often have noted that there are winners and losers in a competitive capitalist world. The question of how to deal with the difficult real-life consequences faced by the losers, however, has largely been ignored. Populist politicians have tried repeatedly to address the...

Against the background of the human rights to water and the SDG No. 6, vendors play a pivotal role for an IWRM-based water supply system in the future. With the help of a micro-economic model, an optimal modal split is derived, the result of which is that not all households should be served by...

Prior to the Global Financial Crisis, financial innovation was viewed very positively, resulting in a laissez-faire, deregulatory approach to financial regulation. Since the Crisis the regulatory pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Post-Crisis regulation, plus rapid technological change,...

Banking is risky and prone to failure. Yet banking regulation is surprisingly not all that risk-sensitive in practice. I show that when the bank has an informational advantage over the regulator, designing risk-sensitive banking regulation gives rise to a trade-off: relying on the banking market...

The SEC regulates and standardizes information production in financial markets through financial reporting standards. With a novel dataset exploiting institutional features of the standard setting process. On average, standards increase aggregate market value by 0.93%, although discord among...

Banking is risky and prone to failure. Yet banking regulation is surprisingly not all that risk-sensitive in practice. I show that when the bank has an informational advantage over the regulator, designing risk-sensitive banking regulation gives rise to a trade-off: relying on the banking market...

Despite decades of research on mechanism design and on many practical aspects of cost-benefit analysis, one of the most basic and ubiquitous features of regulation as actually implemented throughout the world has received little theoretical attention: exemptions for small firms. These firms may...

We model a market for a skill that is in short supply and high demand, where the presence of charlatans (professionals who sell a service that they do not deliver on) is an equilibrium outcome. We use this model to evaluate the standards and disclosure requirements that exist in these markets....

A common problem in applied economics is to determine the impact on consumers of changes in prices and attributes of marketed products as a consequence of policy changes. Examples are prospective regulation of product safety and reliability, or retrospective compensation for harm from defective...