| Sumario: | The regulation of economic life, whether through law or politics, has been a fixture of daily life from time immemorial. Formal regulation occurs through a variety of formal devices, the efficacy of which is argued about by legal scholars, economists, policymakers, legislators and governments. Even expressions like "to regulate" or "to deregulate" carry a range of political and even moral connotations, depending on who is using the phrase and how they are deploying it. Different historical periods are marked by greater and lesser degrees of regulation. Much of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations amounts to a critique of the extensive regulation of trade and commerce that was part and parcel of the mercantile system. The nineteenth century witnessed efforts to diminish regulations and broader laws in many Western countries that had allowed the hundreds, if not thousands of guilds to control the entry of individuals into various professions, the prices charged to customers by those in different occupations etc., for several hundred years. Re-regulation of considerable portions of economic life had, however, began by the beginning of the twentieth century and accelerated after World War I and the Great Depression. From the mid-1970s, a significant amount of deregulation occurred in many Western economies. Following the Great Recession of 2008, there was a swing back towards regulation, especially with regard to the financial sector
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