Mon Dec 28 2009

Clifford Winston talks about the ideas in his book, Market Failure vs. Government Failure, with host Russ Roberts. He summarizes a large literature on antitrust, safety regulation and environmental regulation. He finds that government regulation often fails to meet its objectives. While markets are imperfect, so is government. Winston argues that idealized theories of government intervention based on textbook theories of market failure are not the way regulation turns out in practice. He argues that special interest politics explains much of the disappointing outcomes of government regulation.