Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy

Corporate moves towards focused production and outsourcing, governmental reforms involving privatization and deregulation, and the globalization of trade and investments promise large efficiency gains. However, the necessary coordination mechanisms call for regulatory approval and policy guidelines to safeguard these undertakings against abuse, which in turn are held up against the test of administrative efficiency and global regulatory competition. The question is what standard will ultimately inspire policy, satisfy administration and be acceptable to parties inside and outside of a given commercial and economic arrangement? Ralf Boscheck looks to the various approaches of institutional and constitutional economics to complement traditional market models in shaping policies to govern increasingly complex market conditions. Three detailed case studies of current regulatory reform at successively higher levels of governance are used to illustrate his case: * 'The Governance of Market Relations' discusses the European Union's search for standards to assess and prejudge the reasonableness and welfare consequences of inter-company price and non-price vertical restraints. It also evaluates the EU's 1999 Block Exemption * 'The Nature of Regulatory Contracts' looks at the UK privitization experience of water services in England and Wales, and the reforms introduced in the government's 1999 Utilities Regulation Bill * 'The Governance of Global Market Relations' - the case of substituting Antitrust for Antidumping. The disagreements over making competition policy and antidumping agenda items were decisive in bringing the 1999 Seattle Summit to a halt. In the light of this, the author evaluates EU proposals for internationally harmonizing competition rules. This book clarifies, integrates and applies diverse perspectives to salient issues of governance and presents them in an accessible manner, it will be an invaluable contribution to this field.