Bargaining with the Bureaucracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Andrew Rudalevige
Keyword(s):  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Organizational Complexity ◽  
Presidential Decisions

This chapter builds on the brief discussion from the previous chapter to explore the strands of public administration scholarship stressing the organizational complexity of the executive branch and the difficulty of imposing centralized leadership upon it. It considers the transaction costs involved in managing the executive branch — and seeks to situate presidents as they both respond to the administrative products of the agencies and create their own within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). The notion of contingent centralization, used in other research on policy formulation, is adapted here to the president's decision to “make or buy” a given executive order. What characteristics of an order, or an agency, shape presidential decisions about where to formulate an executive order? When will EOP intervention be most required; when will agencies be given freer rein? The vantage is largely presidential here in asking how presidents can lower their managerial transaction costs. But that frame allows for agencies to have influence over the provision of information and thus scope to shape presidents' cost-benefit analysis.

The Illusion of Costs without Benefits

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Michael A. Livermore ◽  
Richard L. Revesz
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Executive Order ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Compliance Costs ◽  
The Core ◽  
Trump Administration

The core of the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda is to focus on the costs of regulations while ignoring, trivializing, and mischaracterizing their benefits. The administration has made significant regulatory efforts to delay or repeal important initiatives of the Obama administration designed to protect public health and the environment. In some of these proceedings, the Trump administration has altogether ignored the benefits of the rules it seeks to eliminate or suspend, instead focusing solely on cost savings to regulated industry. For example, Trump’s Executive Order 13,771 directs agencies to control costs and eliminate two regulations for every new one. This one-sided approach makes a mockery of cost-benefit analysis. Saving regulatory costs is attractive only if the benefits forgone as a result of these savings are lower than those costs. A rule that reduces compliance costs by giving up an even larger set of social benefits is hardly an attractive proposition.

Cost-Benefit Analysis Without the B: How Rewriting OIRA’s Past Threatens Its Future

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-54
Author(s):  
Sally Katzen
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Regulatory Affairs

Jim Tozzi has a wealth of knowledge and experience with cost-benefit analysis and centralized review of Executive Branch rulemaking. Mine is more limited, but nonetheless significant.1 And while I may agree with much of what he says in his article “Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: Past, Present and Future,” (Tozzi, 2019) I do see things differently than he does in a number of respects.

Research Policy and Review 10. Frameworks for Studying Energy and the Environment

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 851-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
C W Hope ◽  
S Owens
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Problem Analysis ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
Energy Environment ◽  
Alternative Approaches

The economic framework is often very useful in the analysis of energy – environment problems, but it remains inadequate in a number of significant ways. After a brief review of basic theoretical principles, particularly as applied in cost – benefit analysis, some of the limitations of the economic approach are discussed with reference to selected examples in the energy – environment field. The merits of several alternative approaches to problem analysis and policy formulation are also briefly considered.

scholarly journals Cost-benefit analysis of investment projects

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 22-24
Author(s):  
Theresa Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Transfer Pricing ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Pricing Strategies ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Multinational Organizations ◽  
Investment Projects ◽  
Business Units

The paper contents included considerations of the relationships existing between business units of Multinational Organizations (MNOs).  Relevant economic theory provided a framework for the review of accounting practices.  An example of consequences derived as the result of transfer pricing strategies compared with the  transaction costs of pharmaceutical MNO GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was provided.

scholarly journals From Economic to Social Regulation: How the Deregulatory Moment Strengthened Economists’ Policy Position

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Popp Berman
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Analytic Group ◽  
Ability To Act

The deregulatory moment of the late 1970s increased the policy influence of economics in the United States by linking the efforts of two distinct communities of economists: a systems analytic group and an industrial organization (I/O) group. The systems analytic group, which used cost-benefit analysis to improve government decision-making, had considerable success in the 1960s and helped create offices of economists throughout the executive branch, but was losing momentum by 1970. The I/O group was, by the mid-1970s, working from the White House to reduce economic regulation—eliminating price and entry controls across a range of industries—but its ability to act was limited. After 1975, the I/O group increasingly focused on social regulation—rules meant to improve health, environmental, or safety conditions—and pushed for cost-benefit/cost-effectiveness analysis of such regulations. In the process, its efforts became linked with the legacy of systems analysis, leading to legal requirements for cost-benefit analysis of regulation and the expansion of executive-branch offices oriented toward economics—changes which opened doors to the future exchange of ideas between academia and the policy domain.

scholarly journals Towards a More Realistic Cost–Benefit Analysis—Attempting to Integrate Transaction Costs and Energy Efficiency Services

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 152
Author(s):  
Thomas Adisorn ◽  
Lena Tholen ◽  
Johannes Thema ◽  
Hauke Luetkehaus ◽  
Sibylle Braungardt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Efficiency ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Financial Return ◽  
Energy Services ◽  
Energy Efficiency Measures ◽  
Efficiency Measures ◽  
Cost Components

In order to calculate the financial return of energy efficiency measures, a cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is a proven tool for investors. Generally, however, most CBAs for investors have a narrow focus, which is—simply speaking—on investment costs compared with energy cost savings over the life span of the investment. This only provides part of the full picture. Ideally, a comprehensive or extended CBA would take additional benefits as well as additional costs into account. The objective of this paper is to reflect upon integrating into a CBA two important cost components: transaction costs and energy efficiency services—and how they interact. Even though this concept has not been carried out to the knowledge of the authors, we even go a step further to try to apply this idea. In so doing, we carried out a meta-analysis on relevant literature and existing data and interviewed a limited number of energy experts with comprehensive experience in carrying out energy services. Even though data is hardly available, we succeeded in constructing three real-world cases and applied an extended CBA making use of information gathered on transaction costs and energy services costs. We were able to show that, despite these additional cost components, the energy efficiency measures are economically viable. Quantitative data was not available on how energy services reduce transaction costs; more information on this aspect could render our results even more positive. Even though empirical and conceptual research must intensify efforts to design an even more comprehensive CBA, these first-of-its-kind findings can counterargue those that believe energy efficiency is not worth it (in monetary terms) due to transaction costs or energy services costs. In fact, this is good news for energy efficiency and for those that seek to make use of our findings to argue in favor of taking up energy efficiency investments in businesses.

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