Institute Insider

Professor Lawrence Jacobs, the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair in Political Studies, has written a new book, Regulating Markets: The Private Abuse of the Public Interest. The book was the subject of Jacobs' talk at the National Press Club on Monday, October 6. The book describes how efforts to expand markets and shrink government often have the opposite effect of expanding government’s reach by creating problems that force legislators to enact new rules and regulations.

Markets and public authority do not have to be in conflict. The analyses encourage citizens and policymakers to recognize that properly functioning markets depend on the government’s ability to create, sustain, and repair them over time. The authors support their pragmatic approach with evidence drawn from in-depth analyses of health care, education, and transportation policies. In each case, reality proved to be much more complex than market models predicted. Placing these case studies in the context of more than 200 years of debate about the role of markets in society, Jacobs and his co-author Lawrence Brown call for a renewed focus on public-private partnerships that respect each sector’s vital and complementary role.