Policy debates are often grounded within the conceptual confines of a state-market dichotomy, as though the two existed in complete isolation. In this innovative text, Marc Allen Eisner portrays the state and the market as inextricably linked, exploring the variety of institutions subsumed by the market and the role that the state plays in creating the institutional foundations of economic activity. Through a historical approach, Eisner situates the study of American political economy within a larger evolutionary-institutional framework that integrates perspectives in American political development and economic sociology. This volume provides a rich understanding of the complexity of U.S. economic policy, explaining how public policies become embedded in bureaucracy and reinforced by organized beneficiaries and public expectations. This path dependent layering process helps students better understand the underlying historical dynamics, which provide a clearer sense of the constraints faced by policymakers now and in the future. Thorough coverage of the entitlement crisis, globalization’s impact on the U.S. political economy, and the recent financial crisis in the final chapters demonstrate the importance of this historical institutionalist framework.

Some of the chief aims of President Ronald Reagan's economic agenda were to reduce the "regulatory burden," minimize state intervention, and reinvigorate market mechanisms. Toward these ends, his administration limited antitrust enforcement to technical cases of price-fixing, invoking the doctrine of the Chicago school of economics. In Antitrust and the Triumph of Economics, Marc Eisner shows that the so-called "Reagan revolution" was but an extension of well-established trends. He examines organizational and procedural changes in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Jusice and the Federal Trade Commission that predated the 1980 election and forced the subsequent redefinition of policy.During their early years, the Antitrust Division and the FTC gave little attention to economic analysis. In the period following World War II, however, economic analysis assumed an increasingly important role in both agencies, and economists rose in status from being members of support staff to being pivotal decision makers who, in effect, shaped the policies for which elected officials were generally assumed to be responsible.In the 1960s and 1970s, critical shifts in prevailing economic theory within the academic community were transmitted into the agencies. This had a profound effect on how antitrust was conceptualized in the federal government. Thus, when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, the antitrust agencies were already pursuing a conservative enforcement program.Eisner's study challenges dominant explanations of policy change through a focus on institutional evolution. It has important implications for current debates on the state, professionalization, and the delegation of authority.Originally published in 1991.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Product Description: This comprehensive overview of US environmental regulation - from the inception of the EPA through the current Bush administration - goes beyond traditional texts to consider alternatives to the existing regulatory regime, as well as the challenges posed by the global nature of environmental issues...read more

In Regulatory Politics in Transition Marc Eisner argues that to understand fully the importance of regulatory policy we need to survey the critical policy shifts brought about during the Progressive period, the New Deal, and the contemporary period. Eisner adopts a regulatory regime framework to address the combination of policy change and institutional innovation in each period.The Progressive period, Eisner explains, saw the creation of a market regime in which new policies were created to preserve markets or create marketlike results. The New Deal brought an associational regime, one in which power was vested in economic associations that were integrated into a regulatory system designed to promote stability. The late 1960s and early 1970s brought a new societal regime, in which policies addressed the social consequences of economic activities in the areas of environmental protection and occupational health. But it was displaced by the efficiency regime, a response to the poor economic performance of the 1970s and the growing faith in the market as an alternative to regulatory policies.For each of these periods Eisner examines economic structural changes and the prevailing political economic and administrative theories that conditioned the design of new policies and institutions. Throughout, Eisner adds a valuable historical dimension to the discussion of regulation by showing how policies and institutions were shaped by particular historical and political circumstances. (view table of contents)

Chronicles the Academy Award-winning star's life through her relationships with her ambitious parents, husbands and lovers, and many friends, based on such sources as private journals, personal letters, production files, and letters. Reprint. (view table of contents)