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The Economic Theory of Regulation After a Decade of Deregulation

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The Economic Theory of Regulation After a Decade of Deregulation SAM PELTZMAN Universityof Chicago The Economic Theory of Regulation after a Decade of Deregulation WHAT HAS COME to be called the economic theory of regulation,or ET, began with an article by George Stigler in 1971.1 The most important elementof this theoryis its integrationof the analysisof politicalbehavior with the largerbody of economic analysis. Politicians, like the rest of us, are presumed to be self-interested maximizers. This means that interestgroups can influencethe outcome of the regulatoryprocess by providingfinancial or other supportto politiciansor regulators. Simultaneouslywith Stigler, RichardPosner provided an important critique,and several years later he gave the theory its grandiosename. The major theoretical development of the ET has been an article by Peltzman in 1976 and one by Gary Becker in 1983.2 By conventional measures the theory has been an academic success. In this paper I evaluate that success in light of the changes in regulatoryinstitutions that have occurredsince the ET's early development. I am gratefulto GaryBecker and GeorgeJ. Stiglerfor theirvaluable comments. I am also gratefulto the Centerfor the Study of the Economy and State, GraduateSchool of Business, Universityof Chicago,for financialsupport. 1. George J. Stigler, "The Theory of Economic Regulation,"Bell Journal of Eco- nomics and Management Science, vol. 2 (Spring 1971), pp. 3-21. 2. RichardA. Posner, "Taxation by Regulation,"Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, vol. 2 (Spring 1971), pp. 22-50, and "Theories of Economic Regulation,"ibid., vol. 5 (Autumn1974), pp. 335-58; Sam Peltzman, "Towarda More GeneralTheory of Regulation,"Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 19 (August 1976), pp. 211-40; and Gary Becker, "A Theory of Competitionamong Pressure Groupsfor Political Influence," QuarterlyJournal of Economics, vol. 98 (August 1983), pp. 371-400. 2 Brookings Papers: Microeconomics 1989 The most notable changes have meant a reduction or substantial eliminationof regulatoryconstraints whose scope is unprecedentedin modernAmerican history. The challengeposed by these changesfor the ET seems obvious. One strand in the theory is that the producers' interest in restrictingcompetition dominates the political system. But deregulationwas sweeping aside many long-standinglegal barriersto competitioneven as the ink was dryingon the theory. Doesn't deregula- tion then decisively falsify the theory? One easy answer would be that the deregulationmovement was a special case-a one-shot response to the peculiar macroeconomicand political conditions of the late 1970s. That was a time of increased concernabout inflation and of disillusionwith the efficacyof government interventiongenerally. It was also a time when most of the ultimately successful legislativeinitiatives toward deregulation bore fruit.It is hard to treat the conjunctionof the rightwardshift in the political mood and deregulationas entirely coincidental. But it is also hardto push this, or any, special-purposeexplanation too far. This particularspecial-purpose explanation has factualproblems. For example, the deregulation movement was selective. Many areas of regulationescaped essentially unscathed;others, such as the regulation of labor contracts and health care, even prospered. Because of this selectivity, the plausiblerole of deregulationin the fightagainst inflation is largelysymbolic. No serious investigationcould attributeto deregula- tion more than a microscopic effect on the overall inflationrate. Also, the timingof the political change is not quite right. The culminationof the rightwardshift in American politics and of the inflationaryspiral occurred in the same year (1980) that saw the end rather than the beginningof de jure deregulation.3 Ultimately, however, I eschew a special-purposeabsolution of the ET on methodologicalgrounds. The theory purports to be a general model of the forces affectingregulation; that is, it suggests the common 3. My focus here is on de jure deregulation-that is, the institutionalchanges which wouldrequire new legal initiativesto reverse. The plausiblerole of arguablyexogenous or temporarypolitical shifts would grow if the administrationof basicallyunchanged legal institutions were part of the inquiry. Changes in administrationand, consequently, administratorscan changethe regulatory"output" temporarily. It remainsuncertain how many of Reagan'spurely administrative initiatives, such as the reducedenforcement of the antitrustlaws and of occupationalhealth and safety laws, will survive the Bush administration.Evaluation of those initiativesis thereforepremature. Sam Peltzman 3 elements underlyingregulatory change. In evaluatingthe theory, one mustweigh the importance of these commonelements before considering what mightbe special about the 1970s. Seen in this light, if the theory implied that every restriction of competitionwas permanent, one could easily dispose of the ET as a useful model for the deregulationmovement. But that is, I will argue, too simplea characterizationof the theory. One complicationis that the theory does not speak with one voice on the subject of entry into and exit from regulation.Another is the lack of a satisfactory alternative theory. Not one economist in a hundredpracticing in the early 1970s predictedthe sweepingchanges that were soon to happen.Most believed that, however desirable,events like the demise of the Civil Aeronautics Board(CAB) and the shrivelingof the InterstateCommerce Commission (ICC) were unlikely to occur soon. This was hardly the first or last forecasting failure in economics, and the methodological pitfalls of evaluatingtheory by forecastingability are well known. Nevertheless, the fact thatderegulation was such a surprisepartly reflects, I will argue, some generalproblems in the theory of regulatoryentry and exit. I will also arguethat no versionof thattheory, including the ET's, is sufficiently well developed to generate sharp predictions about where and when entry or exit will occur. It is possible, nevertheless,to take advantageof the hindsightafforded by the experienceof the past decade in orderto evaluatethe ET. Though the ET is not a full-blowntheory of institutionalchange, it does suggest circumstancesunder which such change is more or less likely to occur. Accordingly, one may ask whether the circumstancessurrounding the changes of the last decade are broadly consistent or inconsistent with those emphasizedby the ET. This is the procedureI follow. To see the underlyingmotivation, consider entry and exit theoryin the morefamiliar context of ordinarymarkets. The theory says distressinglylittle about the speed or timingof entry or exit. But one would recognize a serious shortcomingof the theory if, for example, it frequentlytook a long time for entry to respond to profits. And it would be hard to take the theory seriouslyat all if new firmsusually enteredin the wake of losses and exit followedprofits. Here I will ask, in effect, if the ET's versionof "losses" in the political markethad any plausibleconnection to the deregulation that took place. Perhapsunsurprisingly, my overall answer is positive. But the exit-follows-profitsphenomenon is not entirelyabsent. 4 Brookings Papers: Microeconomics 1989 In the first section of the paper I summarizethe development of the ET and the historical backgroundin which it occurred. I then discuss the shortcomingsof the ET as a theory of entry. Finally, I review some of the importantchanges in regulationthat occurredafter the theory was developed and evaluate each of them against the relevant elements of the theory. The Economic Theory in Historical Perspective The ET made its debut in 1971after a decade of unusualferment in the economic analysis of regulation.Until the early 1960sthe prevailing theory of regulationwas what Joskow and Noll have called the "nor- mative analysis as a positive theory" (or NPT).4This theory, which has been aroundin one form or anothersince Adam Smith, regardedmarket failure as the motivating reason for the entry of regulation. Once established, regulatorybodies were supposedto lessen or eliminatethe inefficienciesengendered by the marketfailure. The ingenuityof econ- omists ensures that the list of potential sources of marketfailure will never be complete. But in the early 1960sthe most popularculprit was naturalmonopoly followed at a distance by externalities. The main problem with the NPT was that until the 1960s it was not systematically tested. To be sure, some economists had expressed dissatisfaction with its predictions in such industries as truck and air transportationwhere the natural-monopolyrationale for entry and rate regulationdid not seem readily applicable.5But these were exceptions to a generalbelief that most regulatoryactivity was compressingthe gap between price and marginalcost thatwould otherwiseexist. Perhapsthe first formal test of that belief was, appropriatelyenough, Stigler and Friedland's analysis in 1962 of the effects of regulationof electricity rates.6 At the time, nothing seemed more settled in the economics of 4. Paul L. Joskow and Roger G. Noll, "Regulationin Theory and Practice: An Overview," in Gary Fromm, ed., Studies in Public Regulation (MIT Press, 1981),pp. 1-65. 5. See, for example, John R. Meyer and others, The Economics of Competition in the TransportationIndustries (Harvard University Press, 1959);and RichardE. Caves, Air Transport and Its Regulators: An Industry Study (Harvard University Press, 1962). 6. GeorgeJ. Stiglerand ClaireFriedland, "What Can Regulators Regulate?
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