The Legalization of American Society: Economic Regulation

Regulation includes the many ways in which governments interfere with the activities of economic actors via rule making and legal enforcement. This regulation may be insightfully classified into three broad types of response to perceived market failure : protection of competitive results. protection from competitive results, and regulation of externalities. These types of regulation and the legislation that accompanies them, result in both costs and benefits which are substantially inseparable. since some costs inhere in each type. The current perception of the aggregate costs of regulation as intolerably high provides an opportunity for reform that will improve the cost benefit balance, if zealous but simplistic deregulation is avoided .