Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Business & Economics General

Regulatory Failure and Renewal

The Evolution of the Natural Monopoly Contract, Second Edition

by (author) John R. Baldwin

foreword by Stanley Winer

introduction by Ian Keay

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
May 2022
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780228011828
    Publish Date
    May 2022
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780228011811
    Publish Date
    May 2022
    List Price
    $130.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780228012450
    Publish Date
    May 2022

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Description

Regulatory Failure and Renewal develops a framework to understand the choice of regulatory instrument used in Canada for natural monopolies such as telephone companies, water utilities, streetcars, hydroelectricity, and railways from the 1880s to the 1930s.

Using the transaction-cost literature pioneered by Oliver Williamson, John Baldwin examines the nature of contractual failure in Canada in natural monopoly cases, asking why initial forms of contracts between the state and private enterprise failed and why this failure so often resulted in the use of public enterprise. Baldwin outlines early attempts to deal with natural monopolies – from the use of a franchise contract to regulatory tribunals and finally to public enterprise – and compares Canadian experiences to US approaches, which turned more frequently to regulatory tribunals. This difference is due to Canada’s more limited constraints on the state’s ability to exercise coercive power, which sometimes leads to contractual failure that results in replacing franchise and regulatory frameworks with public enterprise.

Regulatory Failure and Renewal demonstrates that public enterprise arose not so much as part of a purposive choice but because of reoccurring failures in the contractual process between the Canadian state and private enterprise.

About the authors

John R. Baldwin taught in the economics department at Queen’s University, worked at the Economic Council of Canada, and is the former head of the Economic Analysis Research Group at Statistics Canada.

John R. Baldwin's profile page

Stanley Winer's profile page

Ian Keay's profile page