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The concept of light-handed regulation, including light-handed approaches to the regulation of airport services, is discussed. The rationale for the economic regulation of airport services and the traditional approaches used for economic regulation of airport charges are summarized. The evolution of international practice of light-handed regulation is outlined, including the experience with minimal regulation across monopoly industries in New Zealand and the acceptance of “negotiated settlements” in utility industries in North America. General reasons for moving to light-handed regulation of airports include the disadvantages of the price cap approach in practice and the benefits of facilitating greater negotiation between airports and users. Comparisons are made between alternative approaches to light-handed regulation of airport services, including price and quality of service monitoring, information disclosure regulation and negotiate-arbitrate regulation, approaches that have been applied to airport services in Australia and New Zealand. The role and nature of the incentives under each approach are discussed. The chapter concludes that whether light-handed regulation provides a suitable alternative approach to direct regulation depends on the market circumstances and the design characteristics of the light-handed approach.

In the era of financial capitalism, how to manage and hold global corporations accountable has become too multifarious a topic for a solitary focus of one theme, to sufficiently outline the whole gamut and implications of their activities. Capitalism is characterized by several well-organized antinomies and contrasts, with reflections of critical dualities that bear a resemblance to the primeval paradoxes of Hellenic philosophy. The challenge of governance of capitalism to be effectual entails breaking out of the entrenched precincts of habitual academic silos. Various standpoints while reasonably informative falls short to explain fully the complex interlinkages between the concept of global governance and the state’s capacity to put into effect its will on corporate power.

Spotlighting on assessing the praxis of political economy at global and national level and the corporate reality, this chapter aims to provide a renewed thrust for the focused recalibration of global regulatory regime. In this chapter, the inquiries take the regulation as the main explanandum for elucidation of the shifting governance framework.

Mises (1949[1963], p. 692) explains that market-failure justifications for state actions, such as economic regulation “ascribe to the state not only the best intentions but also omniscience.” He then points out that neither assumption is valid: government is not benevolent since both, those who are employed by the state and those who demand state actions, have subjective self-interests, and it is not all knowing since knowledge is widely dispersed and the cost of coordination is infinitely high, particularly without market profits and prices as coordinating mechanisms. Furthermore, Mises suggests that dropping either assumption undermines the conclusions that state intervention is necessarily desirable even if some sort of market failure is actually identified. Austrian economists in the Mises tradition have tended to focus on the knowledge problem in their challenges to regulation, however. Many Austrians obviously recognize the interest problem, of course, but they often assume it away in order to illustrate that government interference with markets is not desirable even if it is well intended. In contrast, public-choice analysis tends to focus on the interest problem as source of government failure, although some public-choice analysts also obviously recognize the knowledge problem. Indeed, this difference in perspective is so pronounced that Ikeda (1997, p. 240) explicitly distinguishes between Public Choice and Austrian political economy by suggesting that the Austrian approach assumes benevolence on the part of government officials, while the public-choice approach assume narrow interests.¹ Ikeda (1997, p. 150) also suggests that the separation of these two approaches is justified because “Austrian political economy and public choice are each capable of standing on their own [so] public-theorists…find it optimal simply to continue to pursue their research along the line of either the former or the latter approaches.” The following presentation questions this assertion. Instead, both assumptions should be dropped, and the resulting integrated Austrian-public-choice model should be expanded to include assumptions about the relationships between regulations, property rights security, and both market and political behavior.²

New Zealand and Australian agri-food industries are being restructured both as a consequence of the extension of neoliberal policy settings and as a result of the increasing influence of the global supermarket sector. In the EU, supermarkets have sought to standardise and harmonise compliance, with their influence being felt well beyond European boundaries. EurepGAP (a European standard for ‘Good Agricultural Practices’) is an example of an emerging ‘audit culture’ where strict adherence to set rules of operation emerges as the basis for accreditation of goods and services. It represents the trend towards private sector standardization and assurance schemes, and provides an example of the growing importance of the supermarket sector in sanctioning the on-ground activities that occur in the production and processing of farm-derived outputs.

This chapter highlights the influence of EurepGAP protocols in the reorganisation of the agri-food industries of New Zealand and Australia. It argues that – for industries such as vegetable and fruit production, where Europe is the final destination – compliance with EurepGAP standards has largely become essential. In this sense, EurepGAP has emerged as the standard among producers who wish to export their products. The chapter concludes with an assessment of EurepGAP as a form of global agri-food governance that demonstrates a strong relationship between new audit cultures and neoliberal forms of trade regulation. In both Australia and New Zealand, some production sectors have rapidly adopted EurepGAP – despite extra costs, reduced choices over crop management and a lingering sense of resentment at the internal imposition of yet another production audit – primarily as a solution to the politics of risk in the context of high levels of exposure to market requirements under neoliberalism. The implications of this for Antipodean farming are considered in detail.

This chapter enters the debate of knowing if the financial regulations should be overhauled in the continuity of behavioural finance developments. The lack of precision in the behavioural finance conclusions could lead to misleading new financial regulations adoption. Furthermore, through an analysis of the literature, we show that behavioural finance hypothesis building converges to the neoclassical one's, which contradicts the idea to overhaul financial regulations. We also highlight the fact that universal heuristics and biases contribute to the financial regulations revision proposal. Finally, we analyse some of the propositions put forward by advocates of behavioural finance and the limits thereof.

During the 2004–2009 building boom, building materials in the United States were in short supply, in particular drywall. This shortage arose from the vast demand for repairing and rebuilding houses caused by several large hurricanes, namely, Katrina and Rita.

The situation is complex because there are many stakeholders involved: manufacturers, suppliers, contractors, insurance companies, and homeowners. The problem begins with the suppliers (apart from the natural disasters that exacerbated the issue). The first question that should be asked is Why import drywall from overseas to use in the United States? and What regulations were in place regarding the usage of drywall, and so on. The next item that needs to be looked at is the homeowners. This is a very bad situation for them as they must evacuate their homes. Some of them had to move out and rent an apartment. Some of them sold their houses for less than half of what they paid for them. The problem is What can they do about the defective drywall in their houses? Further, Will they get their money back? If they do, Who is going to pay for it? or Where are they going to stay?, and so on. Since there are an estimated 100,000 homes in more than 20 states that were effected in this situation, this chapter will focus on the homeowners who live in Virginia, as it is the residence of the chapter’s primary author. It is very important to understand the homeowners’ problems and also their options to overcome this problem. Various attempts have been made to solve the situation but the problem is still there. The problem not only involves homeowner compensation but also a need to prevent this situation from happening in the future.

We examine the national regulatory framework in Turkey and its interactions with actors at various levels that set the stage for the shift from a Fordist economy to a post-Fordist one. Industrial maize production expanded in the 2000s in the face of a decline in agricultural employment and state-supported conventional crop production. We use the corporate maize industry as a case to demonstrate the change in regulation and its impacts.

Utilizing a strategic-relational approach, we analyze descriptive statistics on agricultural markets, news, sector reports, and archives of national regulation related to agricultural production and the agri-food industry to identify key actors shaping the transformation of maize production.

Actors influencing the national regulatory framework come from international and national regulatory institutions, and transnational and national agri-food corporations. Local maize farmers have actively participated in the transformation, thereby offering consent to the process. The Turkish state manages maize production through its national regulatory regime, but the agri-food industry drives the trajectory.

Adopting a strategic-relational approach contributes to our understanding of the dynamics at work in economic restructuring by shedding light on the interactions between political authorities and economic actors. Following a post-Fordist mode of regulation, the Turkish government uses particular political devices in a strategically selective manner, not overtly to enhance the short-term interests of the agri-food industry, but according to the long-term goal of promoting adaptation of agricultural commodity producers to the post-Fordist capitalist accumulation regime.

State institutions utilize the tools of political intervention in markets to ensure the long-term sociopolitical consolidation and legitimation of the post-Fordist accumulation regime.

Federal regulatory agencies are created by Congress to mitigate particular social problems, such as pollution (the Environmental Protection Agency), discrimination (the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), and anticompetitive conduct (the Federal Trade Commission). These agencies have the delegated authority to issue Rules and Regulations that have the force of law within their respective domains, constrained by the oversight of the President and Congress, and by litigation through the Courts. Many view the extent of such oversight as inefficiently lax, with the result that “missionary” bureaucracies successfully overregulate and inefficiently extend the span of their authority. After describing these concerns, I develop a model of agency bias that extends my earlier work with Canice Prendergast and Topel (1993, 1996) to a regulatory framework. In the model, activist bureaucrats who seek greater regulation are attracted to an agency's mission. Their biases are constrained by the courts, where agency rules and regulations can be challenged, and by oversight from other branches of government. In equilibrium, agencies gain from the exercise of bias even though all parties know it occurs and seek to mitigate its costs. The public sector is overregulated on average. Overregulation is largest when the social problem is least harmful, and when oversight of agency actions is weak. Stronger oversight would reduce the distortionary effect of agency biases. More precise legislative language would provide clearer guidance to the court system, which would reduce deference to biased agency opinions in the formation of regulations.

Critics increasingly highlight the dark sides of the sharing economy resulting from the insufficient regulation of competition, labor, or taxes in its for-profit sector. In this chapter, the authors argue that regulatory solutions for the sharing economy hinge on the understanding of the ways in which the sharing economy is organized. Here, digitalization undermines established regulation through underlying organizational shifts pertaining to places, labor inputs and output responsibilities. Mapping out the field of actors that are or could be involved in regulating the sharing economy, the authors highlight a particular role played not only by digital platforms as market organizers, but also of a variety of other public and private actors such as standard setting organizations, social movements, trade unions, organized buyers and sellers, incumbents, or policy makers. The authors suggest that an understanding of sharing economy markets as fields can not only capture the highly organized nature of the sharing economy, but also serve to untangle the contestations and power dynamics unfolding among various actors engaged in different regulatory issues associated with the sharing economy. Seeing “Uberization” as a next development stage away from the modern corporation after global supply chains, the authors highlight regulatory challenges associated with the even more individualized and dispersed way in which sharing economy markets are organized and also discuss new opportunities for regulation provided by digital technology.