Rescuing Regulation »

Reza R. Dibadj is Associate Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco.

Fashions a new way of defending the importance of economic regulation.

Preface     vii
Acknowledgments     xi
Conventional Polarities     1
Traditional Perspectives     3
Definitions and History     3
Justifications for Regulation     8
Lambasting Regulation     15
Foundations of the Critique     15
Progeny     17
Chicago school     17
Contestability theory     21
Public choice     21
Where Is Society Left?     25
Direct Effects: Industry Consolidation and Scandal     25
Indirect Effects: Economic Insecurity and the Retreat of "Publicness"     31
The Economic Case for Regulation     41
Beyond Flawed Assumptions...     43
Unraveling the Chicago school     43
Worshipping efficiency     43
Downplaying transaction costs     45
Ignoring behavioral biases     50
Preordaining initial entitlements     52
Normativity as science?     54
Rethinking Contractarianism     57
Some inconsistencies     57
Exalting the private     61
...Toward New Research     67
Post-Chicago Law and Economics     68
CoreTheory     71
Behavioral Economics     73
Special Problems of New-Economy Industries     79
Some Commonalities     81
A Path Forward     85
Substantive Reform     87
Social Regulation: Rescuing Cost/Benefit Analysis     87
Economic Regulation: Gaining Access to Bottlenecks     91
Reachieving Publicness     98
Basic principles     98
Reforming the regulation of public corporations     104
Institutional Changes     113
Limited Agencies     113
Some Objections     115
Aren't government actors biased?     116
Why not courts as frontline arbiters?     118
Isn't this giving up on participatory democracy?     120
Afterword     127
Notes     131
Bibliography     181
Index     211