Climate regulation of the electricity sector is one of the most important growing — and rapidly changing — areas of law and policy today. This is both because of the critical role that electricity plays in modern society, acting as economic lifeblood, and because of electricity's part in...

This paper discusses contributions that industrial organization economists have made to our understanding of energy markets and environmental regulation. We emphasize the substantive contributions of recent papers while also highlighting how this literature has adopted and sometimes augmented...

Natural gas extracted form shale reached record production totals in 2015 in the United States and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts natural gas production will continue to increase. Wastes from shale gas extraction can contain the radioactive isotopes radium-226 (Ra-226)...

The rise of the sharing economy has changed how many Americans commute, shop, vacation, and borrow. It has also disrupted long-established industries, from taxis to hotels, and has confounded policymakers. In particular, regulators are trying to determine how to apply many of the traditional...

This essay considers the role of reputational information in our marketplace. It explains how well-functioning marketplaces depend on the vibrant flow of accurate reputational information, and how misdirected regulation of reputational information could harm marketplace mechanisms. It then...

The United States represents the world’s largest market for pharmaceutical drugs. It is also the only advanced economy in the world that does not regulate drug prices. There is no upper threshold for the prices of medicines in the United States. List prices are instead set by manufacturers in...

The rapid proliferation of connected devices has the potential to transform and enrich our lives and to drive significant productivity gains in the broader economy. However, the lack of sufficient security in many “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices creates a meaningful risk to consumers and...

Appropriately designed Product Market Regulation (PMR) is essential to enhance productivity, boost economic growth and increase welfare. Regulation is needed to address market failures and guarantee the health and safety of consumers. However, by limiting the entry and expansion of firms, a too...

The paper proposes a new way of analysing the efficiency of dynamic market selection, based on the persistence of scale economies. The new methodology is used to investigate the causes of stagnating productivity growth in EU business services. The persistence of scale-related inefficiencies is...