Government Deregulation and its Effects
The Constitution of the United States, in the "commerce Clause," accords to Congress the "powerato regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States" (Miners, Ringleb & Edwards, 1994, p. 122). In 1824, Chief Justice John Marshall established some of the basic guidelines of the Commerce Clause in Gibbons v. Ogden, holding that commerce among the states means "interstate commerce," or "commerce which concerns more States than one" (Miners, et al, 1994, p. 123). From this ruling, the Congress and the national government has moved over time to create a number of regulatory frameworks that have a direct impact on both interstate and intrastate commerce; public utility corporations, the telephone and the tele-communications sector, the airlines and other transportation sectors, and banking/finance have all be subject to varying degrees of federal (and state) oversight and regulation; in some instances, the government has shifted from a close regulatory climate to one of deregulation (Miller & Jentz, 2000).
In the 1980s and continuing to the present time, Miller and Jentz (2000) have noted that a number of industrial sectors, notably the utility, transportation and telecommunications sectors, have been subject to waves of deregulation in which government scrutiny and oversight have been reduced. The goal of deregulation is, for the most part, to encourage competition and to encourage entry of new organizations into the sector being deregulated (Solomon, 1990).
Solomon (1990) noted that the transportation industry's airline sector was, in the 1970s, among the first major targets for federal deregulation; when regulations impacting upon prices, routes, and other aspects of competition were either removed or reduced in this sector, competition increased. More significantly, prices for services dropped, with consumers benefiting from lower air fares and thus creating a situ...