A Doorway to the World of Regulation

Due to negligent conduct, an insurance company accumulates deficits and breaches regulatory requirements. The regulator faces a hard decision: shut the company down, risking harm to policyholders and employees, or allow it to continue operating under restrictions? Scenarios of this kind demonstrate how economic and social regulation has become one of the central tools of government in modern Western states.

This lecture addresses the main justifications for regulation, economic and social, the public interest and the private interest, as well as and self-regulation.