Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence in U.S. Regulation brings fresh insight and analytic rigor to what has become one of the most contested domains of American domestic politics. Critics from the left blame lax regulation for the housing meltdown and financial crisis--not to mention major public health disasters ranging from the Gulf Coast oil spill to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. At the same time, critics on the right disparage an excessively strict and costly regulatory system for hampering economic recovery. With such polarized accounts of regulation and its performance, the nation needs now more than ever the kind of dispassionate, rigorous scholarship found in this book. With chapters written by some of the nation's foremost economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, Regulatory Breakdown brings clarity to the heated debate over regulation by dissecting the disparate causes of the current crisis as well as analyzing promising solutions to what ails the U.S. regulatory system. This volume shows policymakers, researchers, and the public why they need to question conventional wisdom about regulation--whether from the left or the right--and demonstrates the value of undertaking systematic analysis before adopting policy reforms in the wake of disaster.

PrefaceChapter 1. Oversight in Hindsight: Assessing the U.S. Regulatory System in the Wake of Calamity—Christopher Carrigan and Cary CoglianeseChapter 2. Addressing Catastrophic Risks: Disparate Anatomies Require Tailored Therapies—W. Kip Viscusi and Richard ZeckhauserChapter 3. Beyond Belts and Suspenders: Promoting Private Risk Management in Offshore Drilling—Lori S. BennearChapter 4. Regulation or Nationalization? Lessons Learned from the 2008 Financial Crisis—Adam J. Levitin and Susan M. WachterChapter 5. Regulating in the Dark—Roberta RomanoChapter 6: Partisan Media and Attitude Polarization: The Case of Healthcare Reform—Matthew A. BaumChapter 7. Citizens' Perceptions and the Disconnect Between Economics and Regulatory Policy—Jonathan Baron, William T. McEnroe, and Christopher PoliquinChapter 8. Jason Webb Yackee and Susan Webb Yackee, Delay in Notice and Comment Rulemaking: Evidence of Systemic Regulatory Breakdown?Chapter 9. The Policy Impact of Public Advice: The Effects of Advisory Committee Transparency on Regulatory Performance—Susan L. MoffittChapter 10. Reforming Securities Law Enforcement: Politics and Money at the Public/Private Divide—William W. Bratton and Michael L. WachterChapter 11. Why Aren't Regulation and Litigation Substitutes? An Examination of the Capture Hypothesis—Eric Helland and Jonathan KlickChapter 12: Failure by Obsolescence: Regulatory Challenges for the FDA in the Twenty-First Century—Theodore W. RugerList of ContributorsIndexAcknowledgments