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Economic Regulators (LAWS70445)

Graduate coursework level 7Points: 12.5Not available in 2018

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Overview

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While regulation is a well-established discipline, relatively little academic attention has been dedicated to the challenges facing and dynamics influencing regulatory and enforcement agencies. The global acceptance of competition law as an element of economic policy is a remarkable modern development. Today nearly 120 jurisdictions have competition laws, and 90 of these are 30 years old or less. Using rigorous theoretical frameworks as well as extensive practical examples, the subject will draw upon the experience of both older and newer regulatory regimes to examine the doctrinal and institutional determinants of effective regulatory and enforcement performance. The subject will explore approaches that economic agencies such as competition authorities can take to improve their own performances and will identify considerations that should be accounted for in the design of regulatory and enforcement systems. Taught by a world-leading authority on the design and performance of competition authorities, this subject will use the example of competition law to consider what it means to be an “effective” economic regulatory or enforcement agency.

Principal topics include:

  • Economic regulation—major institutional issues
  • Incentives and motivations shaping economic regulatory and enforcement agencies
  • Assignment of functions to economic regulatory and enforcement agencies
  • Agency governance
  • Economic regulatory and enforcement agencies and the political process
  • Assignment of policy tools
  • Evaluation of economic regulatory and enforcement agency performance.

Intended learning outcomes

A student who has successfully completed this subject will:



  • Have a sophisticated understanding of the institutional framework within which economic regulatory and enforcement agencies devise and implement their programs
  • Be able to critically analyse the incentives and motivations that guide economic regulatory and enforcement agencies in performing their duties
  • Be able to evaluate at an advanced level the range of factors relevant to the assignment of functions and responsibilities to economic regulatory and enforcement agencies
  • Be able to critically assess different models of governance of economic regulatory and enforcement agencies and the assignment of decision-making tasks within such agencies
  • Have a sophisticated appreciation of the relationship of economic regulatory and enforcement agencies to the political process and the practical implications for how agencies perform their duties
  • Have an advanced understanding of the challenges presented by regulatory multiplicity both across and within jurisdictions
  • Be able to critically assess which policy tools are best suited to solve the economic problems within an economic regulatory and enforcement agency’s portfolio of responsibilities
  • Be able to critically assess how regulatory and enforcement agencies set priorities and use resources;
  • have an advanced understanding of the link between an economic regulatory and enforcement agency’s capabilities and its performance
  • Have developed a sophisticated approach to assessing the quality of economic regulatory and enforcement agency performance
  • Be able to apply the advanced knowledge that they develop in the subject in the context of competition authorities, consumer protection authorities and a range of other economic regulatory and enforcement agencies such as corporate and tax regulators.

Last updated: 3 November 2022