What's New from the GW Regulatory Studies Center
1/10/19 - The Hill, A long shutdown hinders Trump’s deregulatory efforts, by Bridget Dooling
1/9/19 - Regulation Digest, Vol. 7, No. 50, by Bryce Chinault
1/9/19 - Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on State Alcohol Protectionism This Month, by Jerry Ellig
12/21/18 - Canada's Fall Economic Statement Highlights Regulatory Reform, by Mark Febrizio
12/19 /18 - Regulation Digest, Vol. 7, No. 49, by Bryce Chinault
12/12/18 - The Gopher Frog and Justice Alito’s Unanswered Question, by Brian Mannix
12/12/18 - Regulation Digest, Vol. 7, No. 48, by Bryce Chinault
12/10/18 - The Regulatory Review, Building Capacity for Economic Analysis at Independent Agencies, by Jerry Ellig
12/5/18 - Regulation Digest Vol. 7, No. 47, by Bryce Chinault
11/28/18 - Regulation Dugest, Vol. 7, No. 46, by Bryce Chinault
@RegStudies
New Commentaries from the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center
Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on State Alcohol Protectionism This Month
Canada's Fall Economic Statement Highlights Regulatory Reform
The Gopher Frog and Justice Alito’s Unanswered Question
#GivingTuesday: Why You Should Support the GW Regulatory Studies Center
Now Available: A Concise Explanation of the FCC’s Economic Analysis on Net Neutrality
Proposed SAFE Rule Could Improve Net Benefits of CAFE Standards
FCC Clears Last Hurdles to Creation of Economics Office
The Bright Future of Executive Order 12866
2018 Fall Unified Agenda
Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on State Alcohol Protectionism This Month
1/9/19 - Next week the US Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that requires individuals to live in the state for two years before they can obtain a permit to sell alcohol. I signed onto an amicus brief by law and economics scholars that explains why this law is a paradigmatic example of protectionist legislation that provides concentrated benefits to well-organized groups while dispersing the costs among a much larger group -- consumers.
Canada's Fall Economic Statement Highlights Regulatory Reform
12/21/18 - In November 2018, Canada released its Fall Economic Statement 2018, which addresses a number of regulatory reform initiatives. The document is a broad review of the progress Canada has made on government commitments, an evaluation of the country’s recent economic record, and a discussion of forward-looking initiatives focused on economic growth and innovation. As we look ahead to 2019, Canada’s report includes regulatory modernization efforts that may translate to the U.S. context.
The Gopher Frog and Justice Alito’s Unanswered Question
12/12/18 - In reaching its unanimous decision last month that the Fish and Wildlife Service had overreached in designating “critical habitat” for the endangered Dusky Gopher Frog, the Supreme Court dodged an important question that Justice Alito had posed during oral argument: Who should pay for the preservation of this public good?
#GivingTuesday: Why You Should Support the GW Regulatory Studies Center
11/27/18 - The GW Regulatory Studies Center is the hub for rigorous, applied academic research in regulatory policy. Our scholars are the leading experts in their field of study. We regularly interact with key bipartisan leaders across the federal government, thought leaders in academia, popular news outlets, and the apex of industry. And we have big plans for the future.
Now Available: A Concise Explanation of the FCC’s Economic Analysis on Net Neutrality
11/19/18 - Understanding the FCC's economic thinking behind its Restoring Internet Freedom order, which repealed and replaced Net Neutrality, has not been easy to decipher for anyone interested in the subject. In this commentary, and a brand new journal entry, research professor and former FCC chief economist Jerry Ellig provides a concise explanation of the agency's rationale behind the order, and points out its previous disregard for economic analysis.
Proposed SAFE Rule Could Improve Net Benefits of CAFE Standards
11/12/18 - The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Enviornmental Protection Agency are evaluating comments on their proposed Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule that sets Corporate Average Fuel Economy and carbon dioxide emission standards.
FCC Clears Last Hurdles to Creation of Economics Office
10/25/18 - The Federal Communications Commission has just announced approval for it to organize an Office of Economics and Analytics. Jerry Ellig - former FCC chief economist and current Regulatory Studies Center research professor - discusses what that means for the independent agency's rulemaking process.
The Bright Future of Executive Order 12866
10/22/18 - John Cooney - former OMB Deputy General Counsel - moderated the, 'Looking to the Future' panel of our 'Celebrating 25 Years of E.O. 12866' event, and in this commentary he explains how this executive order struck a balance among competing ideas at the time and argues that its core principles will continue to govern the regulatory review process.
2018 Fall Unified Agenda
10/17/18 - In her introduction to the Fall 2018 Regulatory Plan, OIRA Administrator Neomi Rao states that the administration’s regulatory reform efforts will continue to prioritize reforms that target economic growth and foster technological innovation and consumer choice. The Fall 2018 Unified Agenda includes a total of 3,534 regulatory actions—174 of which are economically significant.
Research
2018 Year in Review: Top Ten Regulatory Developments
1/14/19 - Just as in 2017, regulatory policy continued to be a focal point of 2018 with key actions ranging from proposed rules to one agency’s establishment of a new economics office to inform regulatory decisions. While not comprehensive, this Regulatory Insight highlights ten important developments related to regulation that occurred in 2018.
Bootleggers & Baptists: The Experience of Another Regulatory Economist
By Susan E. Dudley
Bruce Yandle conceived the theory of Bootleggers and Baptists after working in government as a young economist in the late 1970s and 1980s. Forty years later, his insights regarding the forces that converge to support government intervention continue to explain many regulatory observations. Applying the theory to her own experience, Dudley finds that while the B&B phenomenon is universal, the nature of winning Baptist arguments can vary depending on administration, and that regulatory institutions can reinforce or counteract B&B pressures.
Spotlight: HHS Entries in OIRA’s Latest Regulatory Reform Report
By Bridget C.E. Dooling
OIRA recently issued a progress report on EO 13771, the two-for-one initiative, with a present value estimate of $23.4 billion in savings due to actions taken in FY 2018. More than half of these savings came from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). This Regulatory Insight takes a deep dive into the HHS figures and finds significant Medicare paperwork savings, but that the other deregulatory initiatives fall short of providing the kind of regulatory relief that President Trump has promised.
Public Interest Comment: NTIA's Approach to Consumer Privacy
By Daniel R. Pérez
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a request for public comments on developing the administration's approach to consumer privacy. This public interest comment provides an overview of the agency's proposed approach to guide federal policymaking, and provides three core recommendations (1) Privacy regulation should be based on consumers' value, (2) the benefits of regulation should exceed social costs, and (3) future research should be focused on improving benefit-cost analysis of privacy regulations.
Public Interest Comment: EPA's Proposed “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) Rule
By Brian F. Mannix
The proposed “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule rests on a stronger legal foundation and a sounder economic analysis than the stayed Clean Power Plan (CPP). In particular, the choice of a “best system of emissions reduction” (BSER) based on heat-rate efficiency, a measure of CO2 intensity, is much more consistent with the Clean Air Act than was the CPP’s statewide budget approach, as is the decision to use domestic benefits to justify the rule. The proposed reforms to section 111(d) procedures and to the New Source Review criteria are both important and stand on their own right.
Public Interest Comment: SAFE Vehicles Rule
By Julian Morris
Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Reason Foundation - provides insights on the effects of the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Rule and the preliminary regulatory impact analysis thoroughly completed by the EPA and NHTSA. This public interest comment discusses the likely effects of the rule on vehicle fuel economy, fuel consumption, the cost of new and used vehicles, safety, and the environment. The author's findings suggest that the new rule will save billions of dollars in economic costs, potentially decrease traffic fatalities, and is unlikely to have a significant negative effect on the environment.
Public Interest Comment: IRS's Proposed Rule on SALT Credits
By Jerry Ellig
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has proposed a regulation that would prevent all individual taxpayers from claiming a federal charitable deduction if the taxpayer received a state tax credit equivalent to more than 15 percent of the donation. This comment explains why the proposed regulation is much broader than necessary to address the real problem the IRS seeks to solve: state tax credit programs designed explicitly to aid taxpayers in avoiding the cap on deductibility of state and local taxes.
OMB's Reform Plan and the Tradeoffs of Government Reorganization
By Christopher Carrigan & Mark Febrizio
In June, OMB published an organizational reform plan, offering more than 80 recommendations that detail government-wide and agency-specific changes. Although the plan’s goal to make government operations more efficient is a noble one, research and experience demonstrates that designing agency operations involves sometimes unavoidable tradeoffs. Streamlining operations can produce real benefits, but these may come at the expense of impeding an agency’s ability to formulate clear objectives and weakening measures in place to ensure services are delivered correctly. Thus, entering into any restructuring with a complete understanding of its ramifications is critical to realizing its objectives and promoting its durability.
Public Interest Comment: Dept. of Education's Student Assistance & Loan Programs
By: Daniel R. Pérez
This comment argues that the Dept. of Education's proposal to rescind its 2016 change to the definition of misrepresentation and to change its 2016 approach making a priori assumptions about the quality of non-profit and for-profit schools better complies with existing regulatory requirements. The Department should retain borrowers’ ability to file affirmative claims, collect additional data to inform future rulemaking, and more thoroughly consider the net impact of its proposed rules on processing borrower claims on a case-by-case basis.
Public Interest Comment: Council on Environmental Quality - Implementing NEPA
By: Mark Febrizio
This comment makes recommendations for how the Council on Environmental Quality could improve its data collection methods, how to use those data to enhance retrospective review of National Environmental Policy Act regulations and their effect on industry and the environment, and where to increase transparency in its decision-making process.
Public Interest Comment: Increasing Transparency in Considering Costs and Benefits in the Rulemaking Process
By: Brian F. Mannix
In this comment, Mannix explores the reasons why the Environmental Protection Agency might choose to conduct a rulemaking on the general topic of how it considers benefits and costs, reviews some of the legal considerations that should be brought to bear on that effort, and recommends that the administration consider encouraging this type of activity in other agencies.
Public Interest Comment: EPA's Benefit-Cost Analysis in the Rulemaking Process
By: Joseph J. Cordes
In this comment, Cordes discusses the value-added of using benefit-cost analysis in the regulatory process, the extent to which guidance is presently available on the application of benefit-cost analysis to regulatory analysis, the specific issue of which stakeholders should receive standing in benefit-cost analysis, and the inclusion of indirect effects, also referred to as co-benefits, in benefit-cost calculations.
Benefit-Cost Analysis as a Check on Administrative Discretion
By Brian F. Mannix
Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) continues to be the principal tool used by American presidents to guide the discretionary decisions of regulatory agencies under their supervision, and increasingly it is viewed by the courts as an important consideration for agencies to take into account in justifying their regulatory decisions. This paper argues that BCA is properly viewed, not simply as a technocratic planning tool, but as a solution to a principal-agent problem. Specifically, it is intended to test whether an agency can demonstrate that it is acting in the public interest. Viewed in this light, some common analytical practices used by regulatory agencies become questionable. A BCA should not, for example, use an assumption that consumers are irrational to support a claim that coercive regulation is making them better off. Consumer sovereignty is axiomatic in BCA, and an agency that uses BCA to justify its actions must accept individuals’ judgments about their own welfare.
Improving Regulatory Science: A Case Study of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards
By Susan E. Dudley & Marcus Peacock
This paper explores the motivations and institutional incentives of participants involved in the development of regulation aimed at reducing health risks, with a goal of understanding and identifying solutions to what the Bipartisan Policy Center has characterized as “a tendency to frame regulatory issues as debates solely about science, regardless of the actual subject in dispute, [that] is at the root of the stalemate and acrimony all too present in the regulatory system today.” We focus our analysis with a case study of the procedures for developing National Ambient Air Quality Standards under the Clean Air Act, and attempt to identify procedural approaches that bring greater diversity (in data, expertise, experience, and accountability) into the decision process.
Trump Administration Picks up the Regulatory Pace in its Second Year
By Bridget C.E. Dooling
With the first 18 months of the Trump Administration complete, we can check in on his regulatory activity to date. This new analysis shows that Trump's regulatory activity is 70% lower than it was at the same point in the Obama Administration; a striking result for an administration that has made regulatory reform a signature issue.
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