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Nineteenth Century Urban Market Failure?: Chadwick on Funeral Industry Regulation

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Abstract

This essay analyzes the regulatory theory and policy preceptions of Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890), the premier Benthamite utilitarian reformer. We focus on and analyze Chadwick‘s economic diagnosis of the London funeral market in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his view, externalities and market failure in both the burial and funeral service markets demanded socialization of property rights and implementation of a franchise bidding scheme. Chadwick‘s rationales for government intervention, including high taxes and information costs—unique, we believe, for his time—provide the basis for numerous forms of contemporary regulations at all levels in the United States today.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, 36849

    Robert B. Ekelund Jr.

  2. MCI Telecommunications Corporation, 1801 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20016

    George S. Ford

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  1. Robert B. Ekelund Jr.
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  2. George S. Ford
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Ekelund, R.B., Ford, G.S. Nineteenth Century Urban Market Failure?: Chadwick on Funeral Industry Regulation. Journal of Regulatory Economics 12, 27–51 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007905819109

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