PUBPOL 4640 - Regulation and Infrastructure Policy

Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to: undergraduate students. Recommended prerequisite: intro to statistics. Co-meets with PUBPOL 5340.

S. Beatty.

Infrastructure provides essential services such as road and highway transportation, ports and airports, communications, electricity, clean drinking water, and wastewater treatment. This course examines policies related to operation, maintenance, and especially funding and financing of critical physical infrastructure. It includes regulatory issues such as controlling market power, ensuring adequate service quality, and maintaining the assets in question.

Outcome 1: Students will be able to explain the motivation and rationale for various types of government policies toward infrastructure.

Outcome 2: Students will be able to explain the standard set of economic and policy issues that are raised by the unique nature of much infrastructure. This includes the history of those sectors as well as the details of institutional arrangements surrounding them.

Outcome 3: Students will be able to explain the actual effects of intervention in the infrastructure sector, and why some forms of regulation have been eliminated or modified over time.