Administrative Law and Agencies, Economics Of

Administrative law is the body of law created by administrative (federal, state, or municipal) agencies and bureaus in the form of rules, regulations, procedures, orders, and decisions. It also consists of the legal principles governing these agencies. The economic analysis of administrative law intends to decipher the tasks and prerogatives that are delegated to the agencies and bureaus; it also aims at assessing the various means of their control by using the methodology and the models of political economy.

Delegation to bureaucratic or administrative agencies, although gaining increasing importance, is certainly as old a phenomenon as the existence of power and authority. This is no surprise since political philosophers such as Charles-Louis de Montesquieu

(1689–1755) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and social scientists such as Max Weber (1864–1920) ...