Note that in some of the following classifications, an author credited with contributing to the perspective included might not have identified himself with it previously. Moreover, if his work contributes to more than one theory, he might find himself under more than one category. Indeed, not every author attempts to provide a complete theory of safety regulation. Thus, on account of the lack of a cogent and coherent theoretical framework, I attempted to contrive one by fitting together relevant theoretical pieces from several useful but often incomplete theories about safety regulation policy. While some overlap is bound to remain, for the most part these theories, summarized below, provide mutually exclusive motifs and perspectives regarding safety.
Regulation increases safety but perhaps inefficiently.
Regulation is an ineffective but desirable placebo. Although regulation may not positively affect safety, it might create a perception of safety which alleviates public uneasiness. Regulation is unlikely to increase safety efficiently, and perhaps not effectively, because it is always constrained by inadequate local knowledge. Contributors to this perspective, besides those fundamental contributions by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. von Hayek, include Randall Holcombe, Michael S. Wald and Maria Woolverton, John Cobin, Peter Huber, and Albert L. Nichols and Richard J. Zeckhauser. This theory is related to, but sufficiently different from, the first theory above to warrant distinction.