The Role of the Market in Economic Regulation

Abstract

This is the inaugural lecture of Prof. Pierre Larouche. In its first part, the paper sets out a research agenda for a global approach to economic regulation. Legal scholarship on economic regulation must escape its national and sectoral boundaries and look at the core issues of economic regulation in a global fashion (much like economic science does). The paper briefly lists these core issues. They go to the substance of economic regulation, the institutions and the procedure. In its second part, the paper picks up one of these core issues, namely the role of the market in economic regulation, in other words whether the economy or the polity should have the last word in deciding whether to introduce, maintain or remove regulation. A model involving considerations of the limits of regulatory intervention and its parameters (both internal and external) is then put forward as a compromise between the views of those who would give the last word to the economy and those who would give it to the polity.

Keywords: Economic regulation, Cross-sectoral approach, Competition Law and Regulation, Pre-requisites to Regulation, Law and Economics

JEL Classification: K20, K21, K23, L40, L50