Читать книгу Global Issues - Kristen A. Hite - Страница 37

In evaluating why the United States pioneered innovation in fracking technologies, Dan Merrill concluded that decentralized regulation was key to enabling innovation. In the article “Four Questions about Fracking,” Merrill considers how governance structures impact innovation:

Why does decentralized regulation promote innovation? The theory that explains this might go as follows. All regulators tend to be risk averse. If things go well, they get no credit. If things go badly, they get blamed. But the degree of risk aversion of regulators falls along a spectrum. Some are more risk averse than others. Where regulation is decentralized, a new technology like fracking can find at least one or two states where it is allowed to get going. This sets in motion a natural experiment. If the results are good, and the risks do not seem too great, then risk‐averse regulators in other states will give it the green light to go ahead there, too. If the results are not so good, or the risks seem too large, then the regulators in other states will throw up roadblocks to the new technology, and the experiment will wither away. In a more centralized regulatory environment, which tends to be the norm in other parts of the world, the experiment is less likely to get off the ground in the first place. This is because the median regulator is risk averse. And being the only regulatory game in town, the risk aversion of the median regulator is likely to translate into hostility to technological innovation.

Please see Chapter 9 later in this book for more discussions on the role of technology in development.

Source: Case Western Reserve Law Review, 63 (4) (2013) (internal citations omitted).

One relatively modern example of this blended approach is South Korea. From the 1960s through at least the 1980s, South Korean economic growth was predicated on massive government investment in its infrastructure and citizens, as well as heavy government intervention in the economy (through regulation, subsidies, and government‐granted monopolies) that allowed certain family‐controlled firms, such as Hyundai and Samsung, to become economic powerhouses that could drive the national economy.⁴⁶ While South Korea has now adopted a much more market‐oriented approach, these nationally prioritized firms benefited directly from the state approach.