Organized Interests and Self-regulation

This collected volume studies the role of organized interests in collective decision-making and the emergence of self-regulation. In democratic settings, organized interests play a role at the legislative stage, affecting the outcome through lobbying activity. While pressure groups and lobbying are a traditional topic in public choice theory, the incentives to maintain private rules and enforcement through self-regulation is a less developed research area in political economy. The book provides a balanced mix of theoretical and empirical papers in traditional public choice, addressing the issues of how organized interest affect legislation and self-regulation, investigating the incentives and the problems related to the private enforcement of law.Table of Content1. Introduction; PART I: ORGANIZED INTERESTS PRODUCE LEGISLATION; 2. Political Institutions as Screening Devices; 3. Electoral Rules and Interest Groups: the Mix of Direct and Indirect Taxation; 4. Endogenous Regionalism's Free-Trade Bias: Special Interests in the EEC, 1968-1983; PART II: ORGANIZED INTERESTS ENFORCE LEGISLATION; 5. Self-Regulation of the Medical and Legal Professions: Remaining Barriers to Competition and EC Law; 6. Barriers to Entry and the Self-Regulating Profession: Evidence from the Market for Italian Accountants; 7. Imperfect Competition in Certification Markets; PART III: PRIVATE ORDERING AND SELF-REGULATION; 8. Trust under Endogenous Transaction Costs; 9. Self-Regulation of Pollution: The Role of Market Structure and Consumer Information; 10. The Theory of Quality Regulation and Self-Regulation: Towards an Application to Financial Markets