Description
This course focuses on how best to regulate (public or private) firms responsible for the delivery of what are commonly viewed as public services in the context in which the service providers enjoy significant market power. The lectures get into both the theory and the practice of regulation. The main illustrations of the concepts are from the infrastructure industries (airports, energy, rail, roads, ports, telecoms, water and sanitation). These sectors represent investments and maintenance expenditures of 5-20% of GDP (depending on the level of development of the country) and are major contributors to the growth capacity of countries and of their competitiveness. . They also represent a very large share of the required spending of every household. The poorer the household, often, the higher the share it needs to spend on these public services.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand WHY key essential public services need some regulatory supervision
- Learn HOW to think through the regulatory needs as an economist
- Have a good sense of HOW to regulate WHAT and WHEN
- Learn the core dimensions of the basic ECONOMIC TOOLS of regulation as they are used in the real world when regulation is taken seriously by the authorities
Requirements
- Solid knowledge of monopoly theory from basic microeconomics classes. It is at the core of everything you will see in this course.
- For some of the readings, you need to know how to set up an optimization problem under constraint.
- You also need to be able to have a sense of synthesis since we will cover a lot.
Target Audience-
- Economics students (3rd years BA and, as a complement to more technical classes 1st year MA), Public policy students
- Regulators and their advisors
- NGOs
- Regulated firms
- Concerned residential and non-residential consumers
- Members of regional, national and supranational parliaments
- Economics students
- Public policy students
- Project finance specialists concerned with regulatory issues
Course Features
- Lectures 0
- Quizzes 0
- Duration Lifetime access
- Skill level All levels
- Language English
- Students 165
- Assessments Yes