C Consumer Protection and Market Regulations in Solomon Islands and Fiji, Comparative Analysis Anica Mapuru 1 , Gurmeet Singh 2 and Jashwini Narayan 3 1 The University of the South Pacific (USP), Suva, Fiji 2 School of Business & Economics, The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji 3 Discipline of Management and Public Administration, School of Business & Economics, The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji Synonyms Competition; Consumer Affairs and Price Con- trol; Consumer regulatory framework; Consumer welfare; Pacific Island countries Brief Definitions Monopoly – a business that does not have a competitor. Externalities – the costs associated with the production and consumption but are not captured in the market price. Public interest theory – unrestricted markets lead to failure; government is capable of correcting these failures through regulations; reg- ulators intervene to protect public interests from malpractices and misconduct in the marketplace. Private interest theory – regulations only ben- efit certain effective groups in the society; wealth is maximized toward some effective group in the society. Economic theory of regulation – regulations aim to achieve special interest of the powerful interest groups rather than upholding the public interest. Capture theory – regulators are captured by the regulated private businesses with the intention of gaining a favor from the regulated businesses in the future. Political theory – there are cases where the noneconomic interest groups may capture the regulator. Introduction Market regulations apply to markets operating within any government institutions such as the common law institutions including property rights, liability rules, and contract laws as well as the institutions influencing them (Joskow 2010). The significance of market regulation is to ensure that consumers are protected from unfair practices in the market. Thus, an effective consumer regu- lation should address market failures in an inex- pensive manner without hampering the competitive process so that consumers have © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Farazmand (ed.), Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_4337-1