Self-regulation is common, but comparative analysis of self-regulation and government regulation is rare. This paper identifies conditions determining whether regulation is delegated or centralized, analyzing the welfare implications of regulatory regime choice. Because regulatory authority...

Although a common institutional arrangement, self-regulation as an alternative to direct government regulation has received relatively little attention from economists. This paper uses a framework inspired by property rights theory to analyze the allocation of regulatory authority. In a model of...

In this sample of 49 Latin American, OECD, and transition economies, it is the ineffective and discretionary administration of tax and regulatory regimes--not higher tax rates alone--as well as corruption, that increases the size of the unofficial economy. And countries with a larger unofficial...

This paper outlines short and long-term business regulatory reforms that Lebanon could implement to make doing business easier in the country. The short-term reforms represent “quick-wins” because they are primarily administrative in nature and can be accomplished quickly through ministerial...

In the past decade, the World Bank has promoted improving business environments as a key strategy for development, which has led to a significant amount of investment in collecting firm-level investment climate surveys across countries. What lessons have emerged from the papers using these new...

This paper recasts current theories of regulatory or legislative competition. Building on the recent contribution of Buchanan and Yoon (2000), we consider alternative ways in which decision-making competence can be allocated among multiple legislative or administrative bodies. The general model...

The paper addresses the question of pricing access to the network facilities of an incumbent firm after deregulation. Network access pricing continues to be regulated in such industries as telecommunications, railroads, electric power and natural gas. We emphasize that access prices should be...

The shift to competition in utility generation is likely to generate "stranded investments," which are wealth transfers between investors and utility ratepayers. Stranded investments can take either of two forms: (1) "stranded costs" are a transfer from investors to ratepayers that occur when...

This paper studies competition in commodity taxation and product market regula- tion between trading partner countries. We present a two-country general equilibrium model in which destination-based commodity taxes finance public goods, and prod- uct market regulation affects both the number of...

This paper studies competition in commodity taxation and product market regulation between trading partners. To explain the strategic interaction between governments and regulators, we present a two-country general equilibrium model in which destination-based commodity taxes finance public goods...