Control and Feedback in Economic Regulation: The Case of the NLRB

1985 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1094-1116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry M. Moe
Keyword(s):  
Causal Structure ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Agency Staff ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
National Labor Relations Board ◽  
Congressional Committees ◽  
Adaptive Adjustment

This article presents an empirical analysis of the National Labor Relations Board, focusing on the balance the agency strikes between the interests of business and labor. It is oriented by a theoretical framework that, relative to popular models, takes a broader view of the causal structure of regulatory performance—one that simultaneously allows for presidents, congressional committees, the courts, agency staff, constituents, and economic conditions. The empirical results are instructive. All of these factors prove to have significant impacts on NLRB decisions. In addition, the core regulatory actors —Board members, staff, and constituents—are shown to engage in mutually adaptive adjustment: each is responsive to the decisions of each of the others, and their reciprocal relationships impart equilibrating properties to the system as a whole. Thus, the evidence points to a varied set of important determinants and to the dynamic nature of their interconnection. To the extent that these findings are at all characteristic of other regulatory agencies, simple popular models of regulation are likely to give anemic explanations, if not highly distorted accounts, of why agencies behave as they do.

Congressional Committee Members as Independent Agency Overseers: A Case Study

1960 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 911-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour Scher
Keyword(s):  
Labor Relations ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Congressional Committee ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Labor Relations Board ◽  
Congressional Committees ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Regulatory Commission

This paper is concerned with the behavior of members of a Congressional committee in their role as overseers of an independent regulatory commission. Congressional committees seem periodically to become aware of the presence of the regulatory agencies and after a more or less spectacular examination of one or another of them, allow them to slip back to an undisturbed and unnoticed routine. Their status as “independent” agencies leaves to Congress the formal responsibility both for checking on the fulfillment of their legislative mandates and for preserving them from domination by their clientele and the President. Too little notice has been taken, however, of the nature of the control of these regulatory agencies emanating from Congress.This study results from an examination of the House Education and Labor Committee as it reviewed the performance of the National Labor Relations Board in 1953. My sources are the public hearings of the Committee in the 83d Congress and interviews with Committee members over a two-year period thereafter.

Are economists Kings? Economic evidence and discretionary assessments at the UK utility regulatory agencies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Despoina Mantzari
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Electricity Markets ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Economic Evidence ◽  
Regulatory Decision ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Impact

Abstract UK sectoral regulatory authorities are hybrid communities of, among others, lawyers and economists. Since the liberalization of essential services, expert economists enjoy broad discretionary powers in advancing the agencies’ broad statutory objectives. Yet, despite the significant societal impact of economic regulation, existing scholarship in the fields of competition law and regulation and public law has, with very few exceptions, disregarded these actors and the very essence of their work. This article aims to address this gap in the literature by blending theoretical with empirical insights deriving from 14 semi-structured elite interviews with regulatory economists in the regulatory agencies for energy (Office for Gas and Electricity Markets), telecoms (Office for Communications), and water (Office of Water Services). It explores the increased reliance on economics in the regulatory decision-making process and the impact this has had on the authorities’ decision-making and discretion, when making complex trade-offs between the various goals of the regulatory enterprise. In doing so, it puts forward a theoretical framework inspired by Craig Parsons’ typology of political action so as to identify and examine the nature and scope of the constraints that inform and shape the influence of economics in the exercise of regulatory discretion. This endeavour is significant in the sense that it is the first of its kind and, in that it provides a normative framework of analysis that can be applied in other areas of regulation heavily infused with and influenced by economic evidence and analysis, such as ‘pure’ competition law enforcement by both sectoral and competition authorities.

Political Bias in NLRB Unfair Labor Practice Decisions

ILR Review ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
William N. Cooke ◽  
Frederick H. Gautschi
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Board Member ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Choice Model ◽  
Unfair Labor Practice ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Popular Belief ◽  
National Labor Relations Board ◽  
Political Bias

Previous research has suggested that U.S. presidents appoint members to the National Labor Relations Board who reflect the administration's own union-management predilections. No adequate empirical evidence has yet been reported, however, to show that, once appointed, Board members act in a biased manner. The present study develops and tests a choice model of Board member decisions in selected unfair labor practice cases over the 1954–77 period. The evidence strongly supports the popular belief that Board decisions are heavily dependent upon shifting political winds.

Interest Groups and Regulatory Capture

2019 ◽  
pp. 584-603
Author(s):  
William F. Shughart ◽  
Diana W. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
Revolving Door ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Special Interest Groups ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Capture ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Regulated Firms

Economic orthodoxy before 1971 suggested that regulatory intervention could improve on market outcomes in cases of market power, negative spillover effects, or asymmetric information. That orthodoxy was overturned in 1971 with the publication of George Stigler’s “Theory of Economic Regulation,” which concludes that regulatory agencies are vulnerable to capture by special interest groups who shape regulatory outcomes in ways that benefit the regulated industry itself at consumers’ expense. Many empirical studies have since then confirmed Stigler’s theoretical insights. This chapter summarizes the major theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on economic regulation, provides an overview of the various groups that can capture the regulatory process, and summarizes more recent contributions highlighting regulation’s regressive effects and the “revolving door” between regulatory agencies and regulated firms.

scholarly journals Unquantified Benefits and the Problem of Regulation under Certainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Masur ◽  
Eric A. Posner
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Agency Staff ◽  
Prior Probabilities ◽  
New Information ◽  
Benefits And Costs ◽  
Bayesian Prior

102 Cornell Law Review 87 (2016)Regulatory agencies are required to perform cost-benefit analysis of major rules. However, in many cases regulators refuse to report a monetized value for the benefits of a rule that they issue. Sometimes, they report no monetized value; at other times, they report a monetized value but also state that not all benefits have been quantified. On occasion, regulators also refuse to monetize or fully monetize costs. These practices raise a puzzle. If a regulator chooses not to monetize all the benefits or all the costs, it is not doing cost-benefit analysis. If it is not doing cost-benefit analysis, what is it doing? To investigate this question, we compiled a data set consisting of all major regulations issued by agencies from 2010 to 2013. We come to three conclusions. First, there are countless examples where agencies fail to fully monetize the benefits and costs of regulations. Second, in most cases, agencies could easily monetize or partially monetize those benefits and costs. Third, even where monetization would be difficult, the agencies could and should have made explicit the implicit valuations they relied on and supported those valuations as much as possible with empirical evidence. We then proceed to explain how agencies could engage in cost-benefit analysis even when they do not have a reliable basis for estimating valuations. Even where they lack complete data, agency regulators may be able to make reasonable guesses about the harms or benefits from regulations. In many cases, these guesses will be based on the experience and latent knowledge of the agency staff. These preliminary guesses constitute Bayesian prior probabilities. While agencies should be permitted to “guess” — that is, supply a subjective prior probability — they must also be required to update their estimates as they gain new information.

Who Is a Worker? Partisanship, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Social Content of Employment

2012 ◽  
Vol 37 (04) ◽  
pp. 815-847
Author(s):  
Julia Tomassetti
Keyword(s):  
Labor Relations ◽  
Board Members ◽  
National Labor Relations Board ◽  
Nonstandard Employment ◽  
Work Arrangements ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Contractual Relationship ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
The Social ◽  
Disabled Workers

In opinions addressing whether graduate students, medical residents, and disabled workers in nonstandard work arrangements are employees under the National Labor Relations Act, I analyze partisan differences in how National Labor Relations Board members, under the previous two US presidents, confronted the contradictory permeation of wage-labor into relatively noncommodified relationships. I argue that Republicans mediated the contradictions by interpreting indicia of employer property rights as status authority. They constructed employment as a contractual relationship consummated through exchange relations and demarcated a nonmarket social sphere in which to locate the relationships before them. This construction suppressed the class dimension of employment and the connection between relations of production and relations in production (Burawoy 1979). Democrats mediated the contradictions by recognizing them in part and arguing that the workers were engaged in commodity production. They proposed the Act as a means for workers to negotiate “differentiated ties” (Zelizer 2005) in nonstandard employment.

scholarly journals Leadership Succession and Strategic Change in Nigerian Commercial Banks

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (7) ◽  
pp. 205-208
Author(s):  
Abdulkadir Musa Badara ◽  
Tan Fee Yean .
Keyword(s):  
Commercial Banks ◽  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Banking Sector ◽  
Strategic Change ◽  
Management Team ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Leadership Succession ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nigerian Banking

The relationship between leadership succession and strategic change is generally examined. However, more needs to be covered in the area. The paper proposed to provide a framework that will examine the relationship between leadership succession and strategic change in the Nigerian Banking sector. The model will help to a better understanding of the direct relationship between leadership succession and strategic change, hence, regulatory agencies, shareholders and board members, as well as management team will benefit from the study outcome.

The Evaluation of Regulatory Agencies

2010 ◽  
pp. 222-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Stern
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Regulatory Governance ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Regulatory Systems ◽  
Merger Remedies

This article focuses on the economic regulation of infrastructure industries such as electricity, telecommunications, and water and, in particular, on the evaluation of outcomes, rather than regulatory procedural processes. Furthermore, it discusses the evaluation methods in detail. It also discusses alternative methods that have been used in recent years to evaluate regulatory agencies including the various types of case study, econometric, and other methods of statistical analysis. It then considers the proposed structured case study approach in the World Bank Handbook on the evaluation of infrastructure regulatory systems that tries to combine the evaluation of regulatory governance with the evaluation of industry outcomes. This article also covers the application of that and similar methods both in the context of infrastructure regulation and of merger remedies in competition policy.

scholarly journals Are regulatory agencies independent in practice? Evidence from board members in Spain

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 230-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Fernández-i-Marín ◽  
Jacint Jordana ◽  
Andrea C. Bianculli
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Agencies ◽  
Board Members

scholarly journals Two Cheers for Recess Appointments, Penn Program on Regulation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Shane
Keyword(s):  
Labor Relations ◽  
Board Members ◽  
National Labor Relations Board

This article examines the decision in NLRB v. Noel Canning which held that Article II’s Recess Appointments Clause empowers presidents to fill vacancies that occur at any time and during any recess — intra-session or intersession — of sufficient length. The decision invalidated President Obama’s recess appointment of three National Labor Relations Board Members on the ground that there had been no recess of 10 days or longer available to him to make such an appointment. However, the author notes that the Court made the decision on narrow grounds, leaving the elected branches with mostly the same tools already available to them previously.

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