ECON 352
Regulatory Reform and Innovation Spring 2010
Division II Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

Recent national initiatives and legislative statutes on competitiveness, including the America COMPETES Act, encourage the development of an infrastructure that promotes innovation and competitiveness in the public and private sectors. Yet the organization of our markets and institutions will in part determine the success of such initiatives. The purpose of this course is to examine how current regulatory structure promotes or impedes economic competitiveness. The efficacy of government policies in promoting the competitiveness of industries in local and global markets will be examined in this course. We will focus on a broad spectrum of regulations and regulatory reforms that have affected the transportation, telecommunications, electricity, pharmaceutical, and information technology sectors, as well as policies that have had significant impacts on financial markets, intellectual property rights and the environmental policy. We will also consider the implications of market and regulatory failures.