Origins.

Deregulation, reducing the restraint placed by government on economic activity, gathered momentum in the late 1970s. The movement grew out of the antibureaucratic rhetoric that was popular in the late 1960s, especially around the presidential campaign of conservative Democrat George Wallace. By the 1970s some liberals had also endorsed deregulation as a way to protect consumers against legally sanctioned monopolies, such as the telephone company, AT&T. President Carter brought several of these trends together when he promised to free the American people from the burden of overregulation. By 1980 Carter had begun deregulating airlines, trucking, railroads, and interest rates. However, Carter did increase environmental regulation.

Acceleration.

When Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency in 1980 the basic framework of deregulation was already in place. Indeed, Murray Weidenbaum, Reagan's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, described Reagan as extraordinarily timid in taking leadership on deregulation. By...