The Political Economy of Regulation

Philip Booth

British Actuarial Journal, 1997, vol. 3, issue 3, 675-707

Abstract: This paper examines the political economy of regulation, reviewing market socialist, neo-classical and public interest approaches to regulation and analysing the development of financial services and insurance regulation in these frameworks. However, the paper suggests that these approaches do not capture properly many of the features of a market and the behaviour of regulators. Public choice theory is discussed, and it is concluded that there has not been significant capture of the regulatory process by interest groups. Austrian economics is proposed as a possible framework within which to analyse markets and regulators. It is concluded that there is prima facie evidence to suggest that the Austrian view of the market is realistic and that regulation in insurance markets can have unforeseen and undesirable effects. The author also concludes that, until 1970, insurance regulation did not deviate from principles which are appropriate if either a public choice or Austrian view is taken. However, the Financial Services Act 1998 and the Pensions Act 1995 do deviate from those principles.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:bracjl:v:3:y:1997:i:03:p:675-707_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in British Actuarial Journal from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().