Regulatory Bargaining and Public Law

In this book, Professor Rossi explores the implications of a bargaining perspective for institutional governance and public law in deregulated industries, such as electric power and telecommunications. Leading media accounts blame deregulated markets for failures in competitive restructuring policies. In contrast, the author argues that governmental institutions, often influenced by private stakeholders, share blame for the defects in deregulated markets. The first part of the book explores the minimal role that judicial intervention played for much of the twentieth century in public utility industries and how deregulation presents new opportunities and challenges for public law. The second part of the book explores the role of public law in a deregulatory environment, focusing on the positive and negative incentives it creates for the behavior of private stakeholders and public institutions in a bargaining-focused political process. The book presents a unified set of default rules to guide courts in the United States and elsewhere as they address the complex issues that will come before them in a deregulatory environment.

• Covers hot topics of deregulations and accountability of public institutions • Offers a range of legal and institutional remedies for both government and market failures • Author nationally known for his work on the subject, US focused but has international implications

1. The scope of regulatory bargaining; Part I. Extending Incomplete Bargains from the Economics of the Firm to Public Governance: 2. Regulatory bargains and the stability of natural monopoly regulation; 3. The incompleteness of regulatory law: moving beyond the ‘small world’ of natural monopoly regulation; 4. Refin(anc)ing service obligations for a competitive environment; Part II. Incomplete Regulatory Bargains, Institutions, and the Role of Judicial Review in Deregulated Industries: 5. Deregulatory takings, incomplete regulatory bargains, and judicial review; 6. Incomplete regulatory tariffs and the role of courts; 7. Bargaining for state-assisted monopoly; 8. Overcoming bargaining failures in a federalist system; 9. Incomplete regulatory bargaining and the lessons for judicial review.