Professor Robert Baldwin

Emeritus Professor of Law

LSE Law School

Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 5.09
Languages
English
Key Expertise
Law

About me

Robert Baldwin is an Emeritus Professor of Law at LSE. He has written numerous books and learned articles on regulation , including the most widely used academic volume on regulation in the UK: Understanding Regulation (Oxford 1999 with Martin Cave). He has advised numerous corporations, international bodies , government departments and agencies on regulation and is a member of the National Audit Office's Panel of Regulatory Experts. He led the team that wrote the Scoping Study Report for the Government's Review of Legal Services Regulation as well as the team that wrote the DEFRA Review of Enforcement 2005-6.

 

Research interests

These centre on regulatory enforcement; the better regulation movement; and regulatory impact assessment processes.

REF Impact Case Study

External activities

  • Robert Baldwin is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Health Economics Policy and Law and of Law Probability and Risk
  • He is a Member of the NAO Panel of Experts on Regulation and the Scottish Executive's Research Committee on Legal Services. He is a Commissioner of Appeal in the State of Guernsey's Regulatory Appeal Tribunal.
  • He led the team that produced the Scoping Study Report for the Clementi Review of Legal Services Regulation ( DCA 2005-6)
  • He also led DEFRA's Review of Enforcement 2005-6
  • As Director of the LSE's Short Course on Regulation he has designed, organized and delivered training courses on regulation for a number of governments, including those of Ireland, South Africa and Jordan. The regulation courses run at the LSE now have a worldwide reputation and twice yearly offer training to participants from governments and corporations from all over the globe.

Books

Understanding Regulation 2nd edn. (Oxford University Press, 2012) (with Martin Lodge and Martin Cave) 

Regulation is a key concern of industries, consumers, citizens, and governments alike. Building on the success of the first edition, Understanding Regulation, Second Edition provides the reader with an introduction to key debates and discussions in the field of regulation from a number of disciplinary perspectives, looking towards law, economics, business, political science, sociology, and social administration. 

click here for publisher's site


 

The Oxford handbook of regulation. Oxford handbooks in business and management (Oxford University Press,  2010) (with Martin Lodge and Martin Cave) 

Regulation is often thought of as an activity that restricts behaviour and prevents the occurrence of certain undesirable activities, but the influence of regulation can also be enabling or facilitative, as when a market could potentially be chaotic if uncontrolled. This Handbook provides a clear and authoritative discussion of the major trends and issues in regulation over the last thirty years, together with an outline of prospective developments. It brings together contributions from leading scholars from a range of disciplines and countries.

click here for publisher's site


 

The Government of Risk (Oxford University Press, 2001) (with C. Hood and H. Rothstein).

Why does regulation vary so dramatically from one area to another? Why are some risks regulated aggressively and others responded to only modestly? Is there any logic to the techniques we use in risk regulation? These key questions are explored in The Government of Risk. This book looks at a number of risk regulation regimes, considers the respects in which they differ, and examines how these differences can be justified.

Analyzing regulation in terms of 'regimes' allows us to see the rich, multi-dimensional nature of risk regulation. It exposes the thinness of society-wide analyses of risk controls and it offers a perspective that single case studies cannot reach. Regimes analysis breaks down the components of risk regulation systems and shows how they interact. It also shows how different parts of the same regime may be shaped by different factors and have to be explained and understood in quite different ways. The Government of Risk shows how such an approach is of high policy relevance as well as of considerable theoretical importance.

click here for publisher's site

Articles

Reports / Discussion Papers