IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fth/harver/1909.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Case for Quantity Regulation

Author

Listed:
  • Edward L. Glaeser
  • Andrei Shleifer

Abstract

Contrary to the standard economic advice, many regulations of financial intermediaries, as well as other regulations such as blue laws, fishing rules, zoning restrictions, or pollution controls, take the form of quantity controls rather than taxes. We argue that costs of enforcement are crucial to understanding these choices. When violations of quantity regulations are cheaper to discover than failures to pay taxes, the former can emerge as the optimal instrument for the government, even when it is less attractive in the absence of enforcement costs. This analysis is especially relevant to situations where private enforcement of regulations is crucial.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2001. "A Case for Quantity Regulation," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1909, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:fth:harver:1909
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/pub/hier/2001/HIER1909.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward Glaeser & Simon Johnson & Andrei Shleifer, 2001. "Coase Versus the Coasians," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(3), pages 853-899.
    2. Hay, Jonathan R & Shleifer, Andrei, 1998. "Private Enforcement of Public Laws: A Theory of Legal Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 398-403, May.
    3. Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, 2002. "On the Superiority of Corrective Taxes to Quantity Regulation," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Externalities, rules and prices
      by Jim in Our Word is Our Weapon on 2008-03-05 16:48:23

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Mandler, 2001. "Accessible Pareto-Improvements: Using Market Information to Reform Inefficiencies," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 398, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    2. Raghuram G. Rajan & Ioannis Tokatlidis, 2005. "Dollar Shortages and Crises," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(2), September.
    3. Jonathan Gruber & Daniel M. Hungerman, 2006. "The Church vs the Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?," NBER Working Papers 12410, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli & Levine, Ross, 2006. "Bank supervision and corruption in lending," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 2131-2163, November.
    2. Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez‐De‐Silanes & Andrei Shleifer, 2006. "What Works in Securities Laws?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 1-32, February.
    3. Mertzanis, Charilaos, 2020. "Financial supervision structure, decentralized decision-making and financing constraints," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 13-37.
    4. Djankov, Simeon & Glaeser, Edward & La Porta, Rafael & Lopez-de-Silanes, Florencio & Shleifer, Andrei, 2003. "The new comparative economics," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 595-619, December.
    5. Lopez-De-Silanes,Florencio, 2004. "A survey of securities laws and enforcement," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3405, The World Bank.
    6. Edward L. Glaeser & Andrei Shleifer, 2001. "A Reason for Quantity Regulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 431-435, May.
    7. Hutton, Amy & Shu, Susan & Zheng, Xin, 2022. "Regulatory transparency and the alignment of private and public enforcement: Evidence from the public disclosure of SEC comment letters," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 297-321.
    8. Thorsten Beck & Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Ross Levine, 2003. "Bank Supervision and Corporate Finance," NBER Working Papers 9620, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Laura Nyantung Beny, 2005. "Do Insider Trading Laws Matter? Some Preliminary Comparative Evidence," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series wp741, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    10. Daron Acemoglu & Matthew O. Jackson, 2017. "Social Norms and the Enforcement of Laws," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 245-295.
    11. Shrestha, Ratna K., 2017. "Menus of price-quantity contracts for inducing the truth in environmental regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-7.
    12. Andrew Yates, 2012. "On a Fundamental Advantage of Permits Over Taxes for the Control of Pollution," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 51(4), pages 583-598, April.
    13. Stavins, Robert, 2001. "Lessons From the American Experiment With Market-Based Environmental Policies," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-53, Resources for the Future.
    14. Doidge, Craig & Andrew Karolyi, G. & Stulz, Rene M., 2007. "Why do countries matter so much for corporate governance?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 1-39, October.
    15. Elert, Niklas & Henrekson, Magnus, 2017. "Entrepreneurship and Institutions: A Bidirectional Relationship," Working Paper Series 1153, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 05 May 2017.
    16. Elliott Ash & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2015. "Intrinsic Motivation in Public Service: Theory and Evidence from State Supreme Courts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(4).
    17. Iraj Hashi, 2003. "The Legal Framework for Effective Corporate Governance: Comparative Analysis of Provisions in Selected Transition Economies," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 0268, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    18. Roberton Williams, 2002. "Prices vs. Quantities vs. Tradable Quantities," NBER Working Papers 9283, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Louis Kaplow, 2011. "An Optimal Tax System," NBER Working Papers 17214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Environmental Economics," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-54, Resources for the Future.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fth:harver:1909. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ieharus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.