Preventing Regulatory Capture Book Launch Events This Winter

The Tobin Project recently held two events promoting the newly released edited volume in our Government and Markets initiative, Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It.

On December 12th, the Tobin Project held a book launch event for Preventing Regulatory Capture at the Bipartisan Policy Center with editors David Moss and Daniel Carpenter. The event included a roundtable discussion with current and former government regulators and elected officials, who were concerned about the prospect of capture and interested in the book’s new approaches to avoiding it; scholars, who wanted to incorporate this new understanding of capture into their research; and think tank fellows from a range of organizations, including the Cato Institute and the Center for American Progress.

Then, on January 30th, scholars from the Tobin Project joined a panel at the Center for American Progress on the capture of regulation by special interests. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) presented the issue of regulatory capture to a large audience, followed by a panel moderated by Pedro da Costa (Wall Street Journal) and including Daniel Carpenter (Harvard University), Nolan McCarty (Princeton University), Former Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC) and Shelley Metzenbaum (president of the Volcker Alliance). Preventing Capture contributors Carpenter and McCarty discussed how to measure and manage the dangers of regulatory capture, while Congressman Miller discussed his experiences using Congressional oversight to attack capture in complex industries such as finance, and former Office of Management & Budget official Shelley Metzenbaum shared her insights on combatting capture with public personnel training.

The Hill and Huffington Post covered the Senator's remarks, and the entire panel is available for online viewing.