Law Commons^™

Comment On 'Error And Regulatory Risk In Financial Institution Regulation', Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

I agree with just about everything Jonathan Macey (2017) says in his symposium contribution. His claim that bureaucratic tendencies toward regularity—specifically, treating like cases alike—generate errors in categorization seems appropriate to me. His explanations of the pathologies in financial regulation should fall in the category of essential or required reading for anyone who chooses to write on the topic. Where I differ from Macey is in the choice of framework, or perspective from which to view the pathologies. Whereas Macey adopts an “error cost” framework, which is clearly appropriate for this symposium, I would build explicitly on a “public choice” …

Regulation And The Marginalist Revolution, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

The marginalist revolution in economics became the foundation for the modern regulatory State with its “mixed” economy. Marginalism, whose development defines the boundary between classical political economy and neoclassical economics, completely overturned economists’ theory of value. It developed in the late nineteenth century in England, the Continent and the United States. For the classical political economists, value was a function of past averages. One good example is the wage-fund theory, which saw the optimal rate of wages as a function of the firm’s ability to save from previous profits. Another is the theory of corporate finance, which assessed a corporation’s …

Planning For Excellence: Insights From An International Review Of Regulators' Strategic Plans, Adam M. Finkel, Daniel Walters, Angus Corbett

All Faculty Scholarship

What constitutes regulatory excellence? Answering this question is an indispensable first step for any public regulatory agency that is measuring, striving towards, and, ultimately, achieving excellence. One useful way to answer this question would be to draw on the broader literature on regulatory design, enforcement, and management. But, perhaps a more authentic way would be to look at how regulators themselves define excellence. However, we actually know remarkably little about how the regulatory officials who are immersed in the task of regulation conceive of their own success.

In this Article, we investigate regulators’ definitions of regulatory excellence by drawing on …

Pluralism And Regulatory Response To The Sharing Economy, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Providers use platforms in dissimilar ways. Some providers create new capacity and designate it for exclusively commercial use via platforms. For example, a provider buys a car that serves predominantly for driving paying passengers, converts a standard residential rental to a short-term rental, or works full-time via a platform. Conversely, other providers leverage their idle capacity and monetize it (e.g., a provider uses the family car to drive platform passengers in the evenings). This chapter argues that the distinction between new and idle capacity is a fundamental concept that should guide regulation of activities in the platform economy. Creating new …

Progressive Antitrust, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

Several American political candidates and administrations have both run and served under the “progressive” banner for more than a century, right through the 2016 election season. For the most part these have pursued interventionist antitrust policies, reflecting a belief that markets are fragile and in need of repair, that certain interest groups require greater protection, or in some cases that antitrust policy is an extended arm of regulation. This paper argues that most of this progressive antitrust policy was misconceived, including that reflected in the 2016 antitrust plank of the Democratic Party. The progressive state is best served by a …