Tag: Regulation

The recent difficulties faced by Railtrack and other utilities raises fundamental questions about how to achieve low prices and high safety standards. It may be necessary to look for new kinds of public-private partnerships and new ways of combining competition and regulation to achieve the best outcomes. This article provides a framework for thinking about these issues.

Some aspects of financial advice may not need to be tailored.

Industry - and the consumer - are seldom well-served by the relationship between regulators and monopolies. Competition where possible: regulation only where necessary is a useful maxim.

As markets develop, gamblers seem to increase in numbers relative to insurers. We need to emphasise the distinction.

Mutuality seems to be dying as Equitable and Bradford and Bingley relinquish it and the water regulator rejects Kelda's proposition. Perhaps not surprisingly - mutuals suffer from the problems of too little capital - or too much. Is there a possibility of a sustainable constitution for a mutual business?

Water companies are unloved by their customers and by the market. The privatisation settlement was essentially flawed. Kelda's initial proposals have now been abandoned, but a version of them deserves to succeed.

Should scarce assets be allocated by auction to the highest bidder or by a beauty contest of suitable applicants? From FIFA's decision on where to hold the World Cup to the ways in which European governments assign mobile phone licences, the choice of process is the economic issue of the moment.

As Microsoft faces being broken up, Bill Gates should take heart from the lesson of history: the biggest beneficiaries of anti-trust break-ups have often been the companies being "punished".

There are many things wrong with British banks, but contrary to the Cruickshank Report, the fact that they make profits is not one of them.

There are three ways of regulating behaviour - and of the three, regulation by values is much under-rated.