UCL Centre for Law & Economics

Regulation & Public Policy - Ioannis Lianos, Director

The main objective of the Regulation & Public Policy section of the Centre for Law & Economics is to critically examine the transformation of State action in Europe and worldwide with the emergence of new regulatory techniques and of a new conception of the role of the State. An important feature of these new tools of regulatory action is that they make use of governance techniques that either rely on the marketplace (the market) in order to frame or implement public policy or that they employ sophisticated economic analysis (e.g. behavioural law and economics, game theory) in designing regulatory regimes that take into account the possibility of market imperfections and bounded rationality.

The work of the Centre in this area will concentrate on the following research programmes:

1. The Role of Market Organization in Public Governance.
2. The Impact of Behavioural Economics and Game Theory in the Design of State Action: The Challege of 'Better Regulation'.

Other areas of interest include:

• Competition policy and in Utilities: the emergence of an European framework and national experiences;
• Competition policy in a global context;
• The regulation of innovation and the interaction between intellectual property and competition policy in selected economic sectors;
• The transformation of national bureaucracies and the emergence of European regulators and agencies;
• New methods to ensure accountability and transparency in public decision-making;
• Cost-benefit anaysis and impact assessment as a regulatory tool;
• Economic analysis and expertise in administrative courts;
• Cooperation and mutual assistance between national regulators in Europe: trust building tools and networks.

The Centre organises public lectures and conferences/symposia on issues related to the research programme. The Centre also co-organises the Howrey-UCL Competition Law and IP Rights Speaker Series.