The Federal Deregulation of Insurance

Abstract

The efforts to get the federal government out of the business of regulating insurance have been comprehensive but not entire. The project offers two insights about deregulation and how to do it. The first insight is comparative. Given that courts, Congress, and agencies have all tried to undo the federal regulation of insurers, the higher quality of deregulation done by regulators themselves, as opposed to the other branches of government, is informative and makes out a story of comparative advantage when it comes to regulation. The second insight serves as a reminder of the stickiness of globalization. Because the federal government has made commitments to the European Union, it cannot entirely remove itself from the oversight of insurance, much as the policymakers in power today might wish to do so. Both insights make insurance a case study about the way that deregulation can work more generally.

Keywords: administrative law, insurance regulation, financial regulation, international regulatory cooperation