Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation

Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation brings fresh insight and analytic rigor to what has become one of the most contested domains of American domestic politics. Critics from the left blame lax regulation for the housing meltdown and financial crisis-not to mention major public health disasters ranging from the Gulf Coast oil spill to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. At the same time, critics on the right disparage an excessively strict and costly regulatory system for hampering economic recovery. With such polarized accounts of regulation and its performance, the nation needs now more than ever the kind of dispassionate, rigorous scholarship found in this book. With chapters written by some of the nation's foremost economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, Regulatory Breakdown brings clarity to the heated debate over regulation by dissecting the disparate causes of the current crisis as well as analyzing promising solutions to what ails the U.S. regulatory system. This volume shows policymakers, researchers, and the public why they need to question conventional wisdom about regulation-whether from the left or the right-and demonstrates the value of undertaking systematic analysis before adopting policy reforms in the wake of disaster.

Table of Contents:
Preface Chapter 1. Oversight in Hindsight: Assessing the U.S. Regulatory System in the Wake of Calamity -Christopher Carrigan and Cary Coglianese Chapter 2. Addressing Catastrophic Risks: Disparate Anatomies Require Tailored Therapies -W. Kip Viscusi and Richard Zeckhauser Chapter 3. Beyond Belts and Suspenders: Promoting Private Risk Management in Offshore Drilling -Lori S. Bennear Chapter 4. Regulation or Nationalization? Lessons Learned from the 2008 Financial Crisis -Adam J. Levitin and Susan M. Wachter Chapter 5. Regulating in the Dark -Roberta Romano Chapter 6: Partisan Media and Attitude Polarization: The Case of Healthcare Reform -Matthew A. Baum Chapter 7. Citizens' Perceptions and the Disconnect Between Economics and Regulatory Policy -Jonathan Baron, William T. McEnroe, and Christopher Poliquin Chapter 8. Jason Webb Yackee and Susan Webb Yackee, Delay in Notice and Comment Rulemaking: Evidence of Systemic Regulatory Breakdown? Chapter 9. The Policy Impact of Public Advice: The Effects of Advisory Committee Transparency on Regulatory Performance -Susan L. Moffitt Chapter 10. Reforming Securities Law Enforcement: Politics and Money at the Public/Private Divide -William W. Bratton and Michael L. Wachter Chapter 11. Why Aren't Regulation and Litigation Substitutes? An Examination of the Capture Hypothesis -Eric Helland and Jonathan Klick Chapter 12: Failure by Obsolescence: Regulatory Challenges for the FDA in the Twenty-First Century -Theodore W. Ruger List of Contributors Index Acknowledgments

About the Author :
Cary Coglianese is Edward B. Shils Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, director of the Penn Program on Regulation, and coeditor of Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Review :
"In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Regulatory Breakdown addresses two vital questions: Why do catastrophic failures occur? What are the appropriate regulatory responses? Invaluable perspective on these thorny issues is provided by the fascinating and rigorous case studies and analyses in this insight-filled volume."-Robert A. Kagan, University of California, Berkeley "Everybody talks about regulatory failure, but no one does much about it. This book investigates claims of regulatory breakdown in the United States and provides helpful clues as to what might be done."-Jerry Mashaw, Yale Law School