Economic Regulators

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2016:

This subject has a quota of 30 students. Please refer to the Melbourne Law Masters website for further information about the management of subject quotas and waitlists.

136-150 hours

The pre-teaching period commences four weeks before the subject commencement date. From this time, students are expected to access and review the Reading Guide that will be available from the LMS subject page and the subject materials provided by the subject coordinator, which will be available from Melbourne Law School. Refer to the Reading Guide for confirmation of which resources need to be read and what other preparation is required before the teaching period commences.

Applicants without legal qualifications should note that subjects are offered in the discipline of law at an advanced graduate level. While every effort will be made to meet the needs of students trained in other fields, concessions will not be made in the general level of instruction or assessment. Most subjects assume the knowledge usually acquired in a degree in law (LLB, JD or equivalent). Applicants should note that admission to some subjects in the Melbourne Law Masters will be dependent upon the individual applicant’s educational background and professional experience.

The Melbourne Law Masters welcomes applications from students with disabilities. The inherent academic requirements for study in the Melbourne Law Masters are:

• The ability to attend a minimum of 75% of classes and actively engage in the analysis and critique of complex materials and debate;
• The ability to read, analyse and comprehend complex written legal materials and complex interdisciplinary materials;
• The ability to clearly and independently communicate in writing a knowledge and application of legal principles and interdisciplinary materials and to critically evaluate these;
• The ability to clearly and independently communicate orally a knowledge and application of legal principles and interdisciplinary materials and critically evaluate these;
• The ability to work independently and as a part of a group;
• The ability to present orally and in writing legal analysis to a professional standard.

Students who feel their disability will inhibit them from meeting these inherent academic requirements are encouraged to contact Student Equity and Disability Support.

While regulation is a well-established discipline, relatively little academic attention has been dedicated to the challenges facing and dynamics influencing regulatory and enforcement agencies. The global acceptance of competition law as an element of economic policy is a remarkable modern development. Today nearly 120 jurisdictions have competition laws, and 90 of these are 30 years old or less. Using rigorous theoretical frameworks as well as extensive practical examples, the subject will draw upon the experience of both older and newer regulatory regimes to examine the doctrinal and institutional determinants of effective regulatory and enforcement performance. The subject will explore approaches that economic agencies such as competition authorities can take to improve their own performances and will identify considerations that should be accounted for in the design of regulatory and enforcement systems. Taught by a world-leading authority on the design and performance of competition authorities, this subject will use the example of competition law to consider what it means to be an “effective” economic regulatory or enforcement agency.

Principal topics include:

• Economic regulation—major institutional issues
• Incentives and motivations shaping economic regulatory and enforcement agencies
• Assignment of functions to economic regulatory and enforcement agencies
• Agency governance
• Economic regulatory and enforcement agencies and the political process
• Assignment of policy tools
• Evaluation of economic regulatory and enforcement agency performance.

A student who has successfully completed this subject will:

• Have a sophisticated understanding of the institutional framework within which economic regulatory and enforcement agencies devise and implement their programs
• Be able to critically analyse the incentives and motivations that guide economic regulatory and enforcement agencies in performing their duties
• Be able to evaluate at an advanced level the range of factors relevant to the assignment of functions and responsibilities to economic regulatory and enforcement agencies
• Be able to critically assess different models of governance of economic regulatory and enforcement agencies and the assignment of decision-making tasks within such agencies
• Have a sophisticated appreciation of the relationship of economic regulatory and enforcement agencies to the political process and the practical implications for how agencies perform their duties
• Have an advanced understanding of the challenges presented by regulatory multiplicity both across and within jurisdictions
• Be able to critically assess which policy tools are best suited to solve the economic problems within an economic regulatory and enforcement agency’s portfolio of responsibilities
• Be able to critically assess how regulatory and enforcement agencies set priorities and use resources;
• have an advanced understanding of the link between an economic regulatory and enforcement agency’s capabilities and its performance
• Have developed a sophisticated approach to assessing the quality of economic regulatory and enforcement agency performance
• Be able to apply the advanced knowledge that they develop in the subject in the context of competition authorities, consumer protection authorities and a range of other economic regulatory and enforcement agencies such as corporate and tax regulators.

• Class participation (10%)
• 9,000 word research paper (90%) (31 August) on a topic approved by the subject coordinator

A minimum of 75% attendance is a hurdle requirement.

Specialist printed materials will be made available free of charge from the Melbourne Law School prior to the pre-teaching period.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.