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The Other Half Of Regulatory Theory, Hanoch Dagan, Roy Kreitner

Connecticut Law Review

Theories of regulation conceptualize the task of the agencies of the modern state in terms of the public interest. Regulatory agencies, in this conventional view, should ensure the efficient allocation of scarce resources and secure distributive justice and democratic citizenship. Many agencies nicely fit this aggregative mold, but not all. A significant subset of the regulatory practice—the second half of the universe of regulation—deals with a different task: delineating the terms of our interpersonal transactions, forming the infrastructure for our dealings with other people, both private individuals and firms. This Article focuses on these relational regulators, which regulatory theory marginalizes …