The Rise of the Regulatory State

Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer

No 8650, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: During the Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States replaced litigation by regulation as the principal mechanism of social control of business. To explain why this happened, we present a model of choice of law enforcement strategy between litigation and regulation based on the idea that justice can be subverted with sufficient expenditure of resources. The model suggests that courts are more vulnerable to subversion than regulators, especially in an environment of significant inequality of wealth and political power. The switch to regulation can then be seen as an efficient response to the subversion of justice by robber barons during the Gilded Age. The model makes sense of the progressive reform agenda, and of the successes and failures of alternative law enforcement strategies in different countries.

JEL-codes: K13 K2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-lam, nep-law and nep-mic
Note: IO LE PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published as Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2003. "The Rise of the Regulatory State," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 401-425, June.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8650.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Rise of the Regulatory State (2003)
Working Paper: The Rise of the Regulatory State (2003)
Working Paper: The Rise of the Regulatory State (2001)
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:nbr:nberwo:8650

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8650

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().