A Brief Comment on “Humanizing Cost-Benefit Analysis”

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Livermore
Keyword(s):  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
New Order ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Regulatory Review ◽  
Regulatory Affairs ◽  
Regulatory Impact Analysis ◽  
Cass Sunstein

On Tuesday, January 18, 2011 President Obama issued a new executive order and two somewhat related memoranda which embody some of the principles discussed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Cass Sunstein in this Journal. Building on three decades worth of practice in the United States with regulatory review, the new order and memoranda maintain significant continuity with past experience, while emphasizing both “humanizing” and rationalizing elements in the practice of regulatory impact analysis.

Mercury and Air Toxics Standards: Co-Benefits and the Courts in U.S. Cost-Benefit Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Arik Levinson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Mercury Pollution ◽  
Regulatory Impact Analysis ◽  
Regulatory Impact ◽  
The U.S

In April 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington DC agreed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to delay indefinitely a lawsuit over the Agency’s regulation governing mercury pollution from power plants. Lawyers for the EPA argued that they needed time to evaluate the status of the lawsuit, due to “the recent change in Administration.” The case, Murray v. EPA, centers on the Agency’s analysis of the benefits of reducing mercury pollution. Key to that litigation is the EPA’s treatment of co-benefits—the incidental reductions to pollutants aside from mercury. As of this writing, the Agency has still not decided how to proceed. This case summarizes the EPA’s 2011 Regulatory Impact Analysis at the heart of the legal dispute.1

Liberalism and Lifestyle: Informing Regulatory Governance with Behavioural Research

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
On Amir ◽  
Orly Lobel
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
President Obama ◽  
White House ◽  
Regulatory Governance ◽  
Regulatory Affairs ◽  
Behavioural Research ◽  
Cass Sunstein ◽  
Healthier Living ◽  
The Uk

Behavioural economics is helping illuminate the limits of rational individual choice. At the same time, even as research identifies failures in rationality, policy must inquire about the possibility and legitimacy of government intervention. In ‘Nudging’ Healthy Lifestyles: The UK Experiments with the Behavioural Alternative to Regulation and the Market, Adam Burgess critically describes the introduction of behavioural approaches into UK policy making. In particular, Burgess is concerned with the wholesale adoption of nudge-style programmes to promote healthier living among citizens. Unsurprisingly, the UK developments find equivalent developments in the United States. In January 2009, President Barack Obama suggested that “the principles governing regulation … be revisited.” Envisioning a ‘behavioural dream team’ of economists and psychologists to help lead the way, President Obama appointed Cass Sunstein, the co-author of Nudge, as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.1 President Obama further ordered the US Office of Management and Budget to “clarify the role of the behavioral sciences in formulating regulatory policy.” The parallels between the countries are striking. The new UK leadership has consulted with Nudge's other co-author, Richard Thaler. The new leadership has guided top administrators to read behavioural research and a “Behavioural Insight Team” has been newly formed within the Prime Minister's Cabinet Office. More operationally, each of the governments has adopted initiatives to nudge citizens to better behaviour, physically and financially.

Beyond Structure and Process: The Early Institutionalization of Regulatory Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-608
Author(s):  
Andrew Rudalevige
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Effectiveness ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Regulatory Reform ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Regulatory Review ◽  
Regulatory Affairs ◽  
Previous Decade ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Presidential Management

Abstract:With regulatory reform again on the presidential agenda, the history of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) provides a useful case study of organizational effectiveness. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan charged OIRA with imposing cost-benefit analysis on agency regulations, formalizing a new process of centralized regulatory review. But OIRA’s effectiveness flowed less from a single executive order than from the previous decade of presidential experimentation with regulatory review and Reagan’s continued investment in its institutionalization. This article draws extensively on archival documents to understand how regulatory review established itself as a constant of presidential management through the development of attributes such as staff capacity, organizational complexity, bureaucratic leverage, and reputation. Today’s policymakers should heed broader lessons for enhancing organizational effectiveness: singular structural and procedural changes are necessary, but not sufficient, for achieving reform.

scholarly journals A Review of the Regulatory Impact Analysis of Risk-Based Capital and Related Liquidity Rules

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Thomas L. Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Regulatory Impact Analysis ◽  
Regulatory Impact ◽  
Net Benefits ◽  
The Cost

This paper reviews the cost-benefit analysis, or “regulatory impact analysis” (RIA), in US bank regulators’ risk-based capital (RBC) rule proposals. We review the principles of cost-benefit analysis and its application by US bank regulators. We provide a brief background on RBC rules and review the literature on their costs and benefits. We then evaluate 27 proposed RBC rules and related rules on bank liquidity. We find that nine of the 27 rules include RIAs. Five of the RIAs claim the proposed rule will create net benefits, but none provide quantitative evidence that the benefits exceed the costs. In two proposals, the evidence cited indicates the rules’ net benefits may actually be negative.

The Industrial Safety Professionals: A Comparative Analysis from World War I until the 1980S

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 705-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Dwyer
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Safety ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Industrial Medicine

The birth of industrial society produced demand for the services of professionals specialized in matters related to industrial safety. Three professions—safety engineering, industrial medicine, and ergonomics—are examined. These professions are observed to either submit to single sets of demands, to integrate contradictory demands, or to experience scission. Until the late 1960s their growth appears to have been relatively peaceful and uncontroversial. From this period onward, controversy breaks out over questions related to industrial safety, and professions and government administrations grow. Increasingly, the traditional approach of safety professionals is called into question, and they adopt new orientations. These changes are mapped through the examination of data drawn principally from the United States, France, Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Brazil. The traditional standards approach competes with cost-benefit analysis and with systemic safety for influence; in addition, an emergent approach that analyzes accident causes in terms of social relations of work is detected. From Bhopal to Chernobyl, new technologies subject civilian populations to risks of catastrophic accidents, and the action of safety professionals comes under the spotlight. The analysis constructed permits new understandings of the past and the future of these professions.

Bargaining, Networks, and Management of Municipal Development Subsidies

2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyunsang Ha ◽  
Richard C. Feiock
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Organizational Networks ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Fiscal Impact

This article investigates why cities use fiscal analyses such as cost–benefit analysis and/or fiscal impact analysis to manage offers of economic development incentives to business. We advance an approach to understanding economic development subsidies and control mechanisms that integrate political bargaining and network theories. Municipal bargaining power, institutional incentives, and organizational networks are hypothesized to influence development subsidy decisions. The results confirm that local governments’ bargaining power and political institutions influence the degree to which cities use fiscal analyses. In addition, public/private organizational networks that bridge public and private sectors by linking quasigovernmental organizations and local governments increase information and credibility thus leading to greater use of fiscal analyses.

Inflation Inequality: Measurement, Causes, and Policy Implications

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Jaravel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Optimal Taxation ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date

Does inflation vary across the income distribution? This article reviews the growing literature on inflation inequality, describing recent advances and opportunities for further research in four areas. First, new price index theory facilitates the study of inflation inequality. Second, new data show that inflation rates decline with household income in the United States. Accurate measurement requires granular price and expenditure data because of aggregation bias. Third, new evidence quantifies the impacts of innovation and trade on inflation inequality. Contrary to common wisdom, empirical estimates show that the direction of innovation is a significant driver of inflation inequality in the United States, whereas trade has similar price effects across the income distribution. Fourth, inflation inequality and non-homotheticities have important policy implications. They transform cost-benefit analysis, optimal taxation, the effectiveness of stabilization policies, and our understanding of secular macroeconomic trends—including structural change, the decline in the labor share and interest rates, and labor market polarization. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 13 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals The New Control of Territory and Urban Planning: the Eminent Domain in the US

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Sonia Paone
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eminent Domain ◽  
Public Utility ◽  
Transfer Property ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
The City

The article analyses the transformations of the use of eminent domain in the United States in the context of urban redevelopment programs. In the past the private property has been expropriated for public use only. Recently it is possible to forcibly transfer property, from a private subject to private developers, on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates that the new use is more efficient than the previous one. This profound change has been possible thanks to a progressive modification of the concept of public use. Traditionally, public use coincided with the construction of infrastructures and public utility, such as highways and railroads. Over the time, it has come to include other aims: firstly, projects of urban renewal and economic development carried forth by private developers. Essentially, it has resulted in the use of expropriation to assemble lands which are then granted to subjects who intervene in the reconfiguration of the city for private purposes. Starting from some important examples of urban development, the main phases of this process are reconstructed, also taking into account the most important decisions of the US Supreme Court that contributed to the change of doctrine, invalidating the postulate of public use as justification for expropriation.

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