A document setting out some prospective, new thematic areas of policy research in cooperation with RPI ANZ, inviting support and participation. The current list is not exhaustive: more new areas are being identified.
The UK is currently a member of the European Economic Area and is likely to be able to continue membership if it wishes. Its treaty rights under the EEA afford the UK a considerable degree of control over the post-Brexit outcome. Continued membership can be viewed as a ‘interim measure’ that would, in one step, meet most of the Leave agenda, whilst allowing time for reflection on longer-term issues.
In 2012, supported by a secretariat at the Commonwealth Department of Resources, Energy and
Tourism and by Dr Chris Decker, then of the Regulatory Policy Institute, Oxford, we conducted a
review for the Australian federal and state governments of the Limited Merits Review regime (the
“LMR”) in Australia for appeals of energy network decisions made by the relevant regulator. The
LMR regime had been introduced in 2008 with an intention to streamline appeals procedures. Our
Review extended over a six month period and was based upon: written submissions, mostly in
response to two ‘Issues Papers’ (consultation documents) that we published; an extensive series of
meetings we held with interested parties, including consumer representative bodies, companies,
regulators and government departments; detailed analysis of the substance of the individual cases
that had passed through the new system; a study of appeals systems in overseas jurisdictions; and a
study of the role and scope of Australian administrative tribunals in reviewing other types of
administrative decisions ‘on the merits’ . In consequence, we collected a considerable body of
evidence.
A presentation to the Palanza Seminar, 4-6 October 2012, Sestri, Levante.
Scotsman conference, The economics of renewables: will green energy leave Scotland in the red?
Edinburgh, 13 December 2011
Florence School of Regulation Working Papers
Last year we took the decision to take a step back from the existing regulatory structures and consider the underlying purpose of regulation of legal services, the legal services professions and the legal services market. We commissioned Chris Decker and George Yarrow from the Regulatory Policy Institute to write a report summarising what economics in particular can teach us. This report was never intended to be the last word on the subject, but we hoped that it might spur debate and lead to greater academic interest, both in and beyond law schools, in the topic of legal services regulation.
We are publishing this report, together with this collection of essays which provide responses from a variety of perspectives, at a fascinating time in the development of the regulation in legal services, both in England and Wales and indeed globally.
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Government economic service conference July 2008
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Regulatory Conference, Queensland, July 2008
PRESENTATION TO CAVE REVIEW OF COMPETITION & INNOVATION IN WATER MARKETS
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
9 JULY 2008
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Regulatory Conference, Queensland, July 2008
The Traffic Management Act 2004 (TMA) provided for the introduction of a number of measures intended to address problems associated with urban and inter-urban congestion on the road network. This included providing the potential for permit schemes to be introduced by highway authorities such that street works (for example, utility repair work that involves occupation of some part of the highway) could not be undertaken without a permit, and a fee could be levied for the provision of such a permit. Secondary legislation was required in order to allow for the introduction of permit schemes, and more detailed enabling provisions were subsequently introduced under the Traffic Management Permit Scheme (England) Regulations 2007 (hereafter referred to as „the permit scheme regulations‟).
This report provides a review of the Regulatory Impact Assessment that was prepared by the Department for Transport (DfT) in the development of the permit scheme regulations. Some comments are also provided on the relevance that the issues raised in this review have for ongoing and future policy developments with respect to permit schemes
The OFT Report on the PPRS is 114 pages long and, collectively, the annexes add up to 924 pages. As might be expected of a text of this length, it contains a large number of different strands of argument/reasoning and covers a wide range of issues. Almost inevitably, there are inconsistencies in places, and, more avoidably (but also a very common tendency in this type of document), there are many points at which the reasoning drifts off into economic theorising that is only loosely related to the principal issues and evidence at hand.
For obvious reasons it is impossible in a review such as this to assess each and all of the elements of the Report, and some selection mechanism or filter must be applied to the material. The most straightforward way to deal with this issue is to focus upon those aspects of the analysis which the OFT itself considers to be the most significant, as indicated/revealed by what is said in the main text of the Report.
Written evidence of Professor George Yarrow, Director, Regulatory Policy
Institute.
Members of the Regulatory Policy Institute have been longstanding supporters of Cabinet Office initiatives to promote better regulation, from the earliest days of these exercises. The Institute has on occasion also undertaken research projects that have contributed to the initiatives. Whilst the following remarks are critical of the current proposals, they are nevertheless the views of ‘friends of the process’.
A presentation by George Yarrow to the Judicial Studies Board’s Competition Law Course, 9-10 January 2006.
Sparks & Flames, Amsterdam, 4 December 2003
This brief note responds to the MoJ’s call for evidence in the context of its review of legal
services regulation. It is based on past and current work of the Regulatory Policy Institute in
both the legal services sector and more generally across sectors of the UK economy and
internationally. It focuses on general principles rather than on specific detail.
Delivered at the Institute of Economics, Jagiellonian University and the Krakow Academy of Economics