Aims and instruments of government regulation of the economy

Regulatory economics is the economics of regulation. It is the application of law by government or independent administrative agencies for various purposes, including remedying market failure, protecting the environment, centrally-planning an economy, enriching well-connected firms, or benefiting politicians.

Regulation is generally defined as legislation imposed by a government on individuals and private sector firms in order to regulate and modify economic behaviors.[1] Conflict can occur between public services and commercial procedures (e.g. maximizing profit), the interests of the people using these services (see market failure), and also the interests of those not directly involved in transactions (externalities). Most governments, therefore, have some form of control or regulation to manage these possible conflicts. The ideal goal of economic regulation is to ensure the delivery of a safe and appropriate service, while not discouraging the effective functioning and development of businesses.

For example, in most countries, regulation controls the sale and consumption of alcohol and prescription drugs, as well as the food business, provision of personal or residential care, public transport, construction, film and TV, etc. Monopolies, especially those that are difficult to abolish (natural monopoly), are often regulated. The financial sector is also highly regulated.

Regulation can have several elements:

· Public statutes, standards, or statements of expectations.

· A registration or licensing process to approve and permit the operation of a service, usually by a named organization or person.

· An inspection process or other form of ensuring standard compliance, including reporting and management of non-compliance with these standards: where there is continued non-compliance, then

· A de-licensing process through which an organization or person, if judged to be operating unsafely, is ordered to stop or suffer a penalty.

Not all types of regulation are government-mandated, so some professional industries and corporations choose to adopt self-regulating models.[1] There can be internal regulation measures within a company, which work towards the mutual benefit of all members. Often, voluntary self-regulation is imposed in order to maintain professionalism, ethics, and industry standards.

For example, when a broker purchases a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, there are explicit rules of conduct, or contractual and agreed-upon conditions, to which the broker must conform. The coercive regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are imposed without regard for any individual's consent or dissent regarding that particular trade. However, in a democracy, there is still collective agreement on the constraint—the body politic as a whole agrees, through its representatives, and imposes the agreement on those participating in the regulated activity.

Other examples of voluntary compliance in structured settings include the activities of Major League Baseball, FIFA, and the Royal Yachting Association (the UK's recognized national association for sailing). Regulation in this sense approaches the ideal of an accepted standard of ethics for a given activity to promote the best interests of those participating as well as the continuation of the activity itself within specified limits.

In America, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the government engaged in substantial regulation of the economy. In the 18th century, the production and distribution of goods were regulated by British government ministries over the American Colonies (see mercantilism). Subsidies were granted to agriculture, and tariffs were imposed, sparking the American Revolution. The United States government maintained a high tariff throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century until the Reciprocal Tariff Act was passed in 1934 under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. However, regulation and deregulation came in waves, with the deregulation of big business in the Gilded Age leading to President Theodore Roosevelt's trust busting from 1901 to 1909, deregulation and Laissez-Faire economics once again in the roaring 1920s leading to the Great Depression, and intense governmental regulation and Keynesian economics under Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal plan. President Ronald Reagan deregulated business in the 1980s with his Reaganomics plan.

In 1946, the U.S. Congress enacted the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which formalized means of ensuring the regularity of government administrative activity and its conformance with authorizing legislation. The APA established uniform procedures for a federal agency's promulgation of regulations and adjudication of claims. The APA also sets forth the process for judicial review of agency action.