Regulation and Deregulation

To clear up the issue of regulation and deregulation is the same as unravelling a very intricate skein. For “regulation” the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics produces two different entries, presented as substantially distinct. The first entry, written by Robert Boyer, who mostly contributed to the corresponding line of thought, defines regulation (or rather the French label “régulation”) as “Any dynamic process of adaptation of production and social demand resulting from a conjunction of economic adjustments linked to a given configuration of social relations, forms of organization and structures”, its study aiming at “.. describing, and.. explaining the transition from one mode of régulation to another in a long- term historical perspective”. The second entry, instead, more traditionally defines regulation as consisting “.. of governmental actions to control price, sale and production decisions of firms in an avowed effort to prevent private decisionmaking that would take inadequate account of the ‘public interest’”(Breyer-MacAvoy 1987).