PUBPOL 5340

Regulation and Infrastructure Policy

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

Infrastructure provides essential services such as road and highway transportation, ports and airports, communications, electricity, clean drinking water, and wastewater treatment. This course examines policies related to operation, maintenance, and especially funding and financing of critical physical infrastructure. It includes regulatory issues such as controlling market power, ensuring adequate service quality, and maintaining the assets in question. (MPA-ECONPL, MPA-INTPMN, MPA-ME, MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SCITEC, MPA-SOCPOL)

Enrollment Priority Enrollment limited to: graduate students.

Program Requirements (MPA-ECONPL, MPA-INTPMN, MPA-ME, MPA-PUBNON, MPA-SCITEC, MPA-SOCPOL)

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025FA, 2024FA, 2023FA, 2022FA

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to explain the motivation and rationale for various types of government policies toward infrastructure.
• Students will be able to explain the standard set of economic and policy issues that are raised by the unique nature of much infrastructure. This includes the history of those sectors as well as the details of institutional arrangements surrounding them.
• Students will be able to explain the actual effects of intervention in the infrastructure sector, and why some forms of regulation have been eliminated or modified over time.

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