Government Regulation of Markets (Pubp 620, Law 328)

This course focuses on the economics of regulation of markets. It is about identifying markets failures, how regulations could address those market failures, and whether those regulations are successful in practice. The course is focused on the current United States with a little bit of American economic history thrown in. While this is a graduate-level class, it is not a particularly technical class as the students have a wide range of academic backgrounds. Both public policy and law students enroll in the class and it is common to have students in the class who did not take any economics as an undergraduate. The version of the class that I teach for undergraduates (Econ 362) puts more emphasis on working through the models and problem sets and less emphasis on regulations in practice.

Syllabus and Reading List

Syllabus
Reading List

Assignment Instructions

Policy Brief Guidelines

Lecture Slides

Below are links to lecture slides for the class. Note that the majority of lectures are chalk talks, so these slides will seem rather incomplete and disjointed. In particular, we work through all of the economic theory for each section of the course on the Blackboard. We then turn to the slides to provide real-world context for that theory.

A Brief History of Regulation
Antitrust Regulation
A Brief Primer on Auctions
Natural Monopoly Regulation
Intellectual Property Regulation
Environmental Regulation
Valuing Human Life
Product and Workplace Safety (Part I)
Product and Workplace Safety (Part II)
Regulation of Financial Markets (Part I)
Regulation of Financial Markets (Part II)