The Economics and Politics of Regulation: Perspectives, Agenda, and Approaches

This paper provides perspectives on research on regulation, identifies an agenda of research topics, and discusses approaches to some of those topics. The focus is on a set of presently-identified issues on which social science research may be able to make a contribution, regardless of how amenable the issues are to study with our present set of analytical tools. The paper thus focuses more on research opportunities and less on where progress is most likely to be made. Many of these research opportunities are suggested by regulatory practice and emerging concerns.