Book Review: Promoting Competition in Regulated Markets

• Date: 01 June 1976
• Author: James R. Nelson
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7602100210
• Published date: 01 June 1976
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

435

Almarin Phillips (ed.), Promoting Competition in Regulated

Markets, 'Washington, D. C.: The Brookings

Institution

(1975), xiii +397 pp., $10.95.

This book is, first of all, a

triumph

for

its editor. This

reviewer was privileged to

attend

the Brookings conference

from which these

papers

sprang.

It

was an excellent confer-

ence, with a high

and

uniform level of presentation by the

authors of the papers.

But

the level was nothing like as high

or as uniform as the level of contributions to this book. More--

over, a good deal of the material included in each published

paper

has been available only

after

the date of the original

conference. All of this does

great

credit to the authors, and

perhaps

even more to the editor.

The excellence of the editorship also justifies the long wait

between conference

and

publication: from October 1971 to

January

1975.

In

this case, the wheel of economic fortune

was spinning gyroscopically, because both the general theme

of the book

and

the individual contributions seem more rele-

vant

to immediate issues than they would have seemed a few

years ago. This is a special cause

for

professional congratu-

lation in an

era

when economists, as seers, have seemed more

like voyeurs.

At

this point, as so often in reviews, the time comes to

emulate George Washington's

"I

did it with my little hatchet."

But

the

present

hatchet is two-headed, like a woodsman's

axe;

for

the main criticism to be levied

against

this book is also

adescription of its main virtue.

This vice-cum-virtue is the following: the title, Promoting

Competition in Regulated Markets, is only intermittently de-

scriptive of the contents.

At

that, this title is probably as

accurate as any other, because the topics discussed range from

the

state

of competition in specific regulated industries

through the possible effects of endeavoring to promote com-

petition in these industries to the question of whether regula-

tion might

not

already

promote too muck competition of cer-

tain

types in regulated industries.

The

tone of the

authors