What's New from the GW Regulatory Studies Center
10/7/19 - Are Agencies Responsive To Mass Comment Campaigns?, by Aryamala Prasad
10/2/19 - ‘Big Bad Trusts’ Are a Progressive Myth, by Jerry Ellig & Phil Gramm, Wall Street Journal
10/2/19 - Lost in the Flood?: The Efficacy of Mass Comment Campaigns in Agency Rulemaking, by Steven J. Balla, Alexander R. Beck, Elizabeth Meehan, and Aryamala Prasad
10/2/19 - Bigger Stones for David: Tools to Give OIRA More Leverage in Regulatory Review, by Jerry Ellig
9/27/19 - Where's the Spam? Interest Groups and Mass Comment Campaigns in Agency Rulemaking, by Steven J. Balla, Alexander R. Beck, William C. Cubbison, & Aryamala Prasad
9/17/19 - The Capitalism Paradox, by Susan E. Dudley, Forbes
9/17/19 - Dynamic Benefit-Cost Analysis for Uncertain Futures, by Susan E. Dudley, Daniel R. Pérez, Brian F. Mannix, & Christopher Carrigan
9/16/19 - An OIRA Rule on Rules, by Bridget C.E. Dooling
9/12/19 - David Versus Godzilla: Bigger Stones, by Jerry Ellig & Richard Williams
9/12/19 - Codifying the Cost-Benefit State, by Brian F. Mannix & Bridget C.E. Dooling
@RegStudies
New Commentaries from the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center
Unified Agenda Released without FY 2019 Regulatory Reform Report
Rail Regulators Ponder Benefit-Cost Analysis
Tracking Regulatory Activity through Trends in Federal Budgets
Exhaustion can be Exhausting! EPA Proposes Reforms to Permit Appeals Process
ED Settles on Less Ambitious Overhaul of Borrower Defense
Are Agencies Responsive To Mass Comment Campaigns?
Bigger Stones for David: Tools to Give OIRA More Leverage in Regulatory Review
An OIRA Rule on Rules
The Ambition of the Administrative State
Unified Agenda Released without FY 2019 Regulatory Reform Report
This morning, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) released its annual Regulatory Plan and semiannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Notably absent is the Regulatory Reform Status Report, which tracks executive agency performance in complying with the deregulatory requirements of Executive Order (EO) 13771. With regards to actions listed as active in the Agenda, agencies plan to issue an average of approximately 2.5 significant deregulatory actions for every 1 regulatory action.
Rail Regulators Ponder Benefit-Cost Analysis
11/18/19 -- Although regulatory impact analysis would certainly not automate STB regulatory decisions, it would provide a coherent and organized framework for discovering and presenting information about the likely consequences of regulatory alternatives.
Tracking Regulatory Activity through Trends in Federal Budgets
11/12/19 -- The FY 2020 Regulators’ Budget requests an overall increase in spending. Details within that request point to a notable increase in spending for agencies focused on homeland security, with a decrease in agency spending for regulators focused on the environment and energy.
Exhaustion can be Exhausting! EPA Proposes Reforms to Permit Appeals Process
11/6/19 -- The proposed Environmental Appeals Board reforms will provide a faster path to a final EPA decision, so that applicants can either live with it or challenge it in court, but in either case they will not be stuck in administrative limbo.
ED Settles on Less Ambitious Overhaul of Borrower Defense
10/16/2019 - The Department of Education recently published its long-awaited, final rule detailing how the agency will process borrower defense and other loan discharges related to its Federal Direct Loan Program. The final rule applies to all loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2020 and departs from the agency’s approach to adjudicating claims under the Obama administration.
Are Agencies Responsive To Mass Comment Campaigns?
10/7/19 -- New research finds that agencies perform a detailed review of mass comment campaigns on their proposed rules, but the affect of these campaigns on the outcome of final rules may be negligible.
Bigger Stones for David: Tools to Give OIRA More Leverage in Regulatory Review
10/2/19 -- Regulatory review of agency rulemaking activity through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs should be linked to each agency’s strategic planning, and carry budgetary consequences. This will help agencies to more clearly define their goals, achieve their objectives, and reward positive results.
An OIRA Rule on Rules
9/16/19 -- Judicial review of agency benefit-cost analysis is on the rise. Although courts are paying more attention to these analyses, they lack a robust toolkit to assess them. A cross-government rule, written by OIRA, could help by giving courts a set of standards against which they can assess agency rules.
The Ambition of the Administrative State
8/30/19 -- America’s Founding Fathers strove for a government based on a separation of powers, wherein federal power would be limited, and divided among three branches. Counting on “ambition [to] counteract ambition,” they designed the Constitution to allow each branch to challenge the powers or decisions of another. Over the last century, the executive branch has grown dramatically, raising questions as to how relevant the Framers’ notion of checks and balances is today.
Research
Designing a Choice Architecture for Regulators
By: Susan E. Dudley & Zhoudan Xie
Recognizing that cognitive biases can also affect regulators themselves, this article attempts to undertand how the institutional environment in which regulators operate interacts with their cognitive biases. This article offers suggestions for improving the regulatory choice architecture at federal agencies by having public managers and policy makers factor in predictable biases when regulating individual behaviors or market transactions.
STB's Railroad Revenue Adequacy
By: Jerry Ellig
The Surface Transportation Board will hold a hearing on December 12 to discuss recommendations from the STB's Rate Reform Task Force. This comment addresses several of the task force's proposals, and provides additional recommendations for the STB to improve its revenue adequacy regulations.
Regulatory Impact Analysis and Litigation Risk
By Christopher Carrigan, Jerry Ellig, and Zhoudan Xie
This paper explores the role that the regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) that agencies are required to prepare for important proposed rules play in decisions by courts about whether these rules should be upheld when they are challenged after promulgation. The results suggest that better RIAs are associated with lower likelihoods that the associated rules are later invalidated by courts, provided that the associated agency explains how it used the RIA in its decision-making. When the agency does not describe how the RIA was utilized, there is no correlation between the quality of analysis and the likelihood the regulation will be invalidated. An explanation of the RIA’s role in the agency’s decision also appears to increase the likelihood that the regulation will be invalidated by inviting an increased level of court scrutiny, and as a result, the quality of the RIA must be sufficiently high to offset this effect.
STB's Market Dominance and Final Offer Rate Review
By: Jerry Ellig
The two rulemakings this comment addresses are the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB’s) latest efforts to develop simpler and less costly rate complaint processes. These two proceedings provide an excellent opportunity for the STB to “test drive” the framework for benefit-cost analysis that is most commonly employed by federal agencies: the analytical principles and requirements articulated in President Clinton’s Executive Order 12866 and OMB Circular A-4. The most common and accurate term for this type of analysis is “Regulatory Impact Analysis” (RIA), because a full RIA involves more than just estimation of benefits and costs. This comment briefly explains the RIA framework and demonstrates how it could be used to answer key factual questions the STB must answer in order to accomplish its statutory goals.
Regulators’ Budget: Homeland Security Remains Key Administration Priority
By: Mark Febrizio, Melinda Warren, and Susan Dudley
10/23/19 -- The annual report for FY 2020 finds that the president's proposed Budget would increase overall spending on regulatory agencies over FY 2019 levels. The total request of $75.2 billion in regulatory outlays is a 2.9% increase year-to-year when adjusted for inflation. The report also finds that the number of regulators would rise from 281,606 to 287,063 – a 1.9% increase relative to 2019. These topline figures hide some large proposed increases in some regulatory agencies and large decreases in others. Regulators in the Department of Homeland Security would receive a 9.2 percent real increase in resources and a 5.6 percent increase in staff in 2020. On the other hand, the Department of Energy would receive 31.8 percent less in 2020 than appropriated in 2019.
Lost in the Flood?: The Efficacy of Mass Comment Campaigns in Agency Rulemaking
By: Steven J. Balla, Alexander R. Beck, Elizabeth Meehan, and Aryamala Prasad
By assembling information about more than 1,000 mass comment campaigns that occurred during Environmental Protection Agency rulemakings between 2012 and 2016, the analysis addresses the manner in which the agency responds to campaigns and the association between campaigns and the substance of rules.
Where's the Spam? Interest Groups and Mass Comment Campaigns in Agency Rulemaking
By: Steven J. Balla, Alexander R. Beck, William C. Cubbison, & Aryamala Prasad
Through an analysis of more than one thousand mass comment campaigns submitted on Environmental Protection Agency rulemakings between 2012 and 2016, this article's findings suggest that mass comment campaigns are not a phenomenon meriting unique explanation, but rather occur in a manner similar to lobbying in other policymaking venues, such as lawmaking in Congress. The research also confirms expectations that campaigns submitted by regulated entities (i.e., industries) are more substantive than campaigns generated by beneficiaries of stringent regulations (e.g., environmental advocacy groups).
Dynamic Benefit-Cost Analysis for Uncertain Futures
By: Susan E. Dudley, Daniel R. Pérez, Brian F. Mannix, & Christopher Carrigan
Policymakers face demands to act today to protect against a wide range of future risks, and to do so without impeding economic growth. Yet traditional analytical tools may not be adequate to frame the relevant uncertainties and tradeoffs. Challenges such as climate change, nuclear war, and widespread natural disasters don't lend themselves to decision rules designed for discrete policy questions and marginal analyses. We refer to such issues as "uncertain futures."
Muddling-Through and Deep Learning for Managing Large-Scale Uncertain Risks
By: Tony Cox
Building on Charles Lindblom's research on the limits of rational-comprehensive decisionmaking, Tony Cox provides insights on how machine learning can help individuals and institutions make better informed decisions - improving society's experience of 'muddling through' policymaking under uncertainty.
From Football to Oil Rigs: Risk Assessment for Combined Cyber and Physical Attacks
By: Fred S. Roberts
Reviewing risk assessment to scenarios of terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure including U.S. sporting venues and the international maritime transportation system. Fred Roberts notes that these assessments traditionally treat physical and cyber attacks separately and are inappropriate for considering the risk of combined attacks that include both a physical and cyber component. He proposes a framework informed by expert judgement to determine whether an attacker would likely prefer executing a combined or traditional physical attack on a given target.
Nuclear War as a Global Catastrophic Risk
By: James Scouras
James Scouras identifies nuclear war as a global catastrophic risk and suggests that multidisciplinary studies that combine insights from "historical case studies, expert elicitation, probabilistic risk assessment, complex systems theory, and other disciplines" can address many of the shortcomings of single analytic approaches. He suggests that experts can address current gaps in their assessments of the consequences of nuclear weapons by further investigating understudied phenomena (e.g., the effects of electromagnetic pulses, nuclear winter, the prolonged effects of radiation).
Responsible Precautions for Uncertain Environmental Risks
By: W. Kip Viscusi, Joel Huber, & Jason Bell
Elaborating on best practices for decisionmakers facing low probability, high consequence hazards. Viscusi, Huber, and Bell point out that these uncertain risks create incentives to pursue suboptimal policy approaches that potentially over commit public resources to less consequential hazards.
David Versus Godzilla: Bigger Stones
By: Jerry Ellig & Richard Williams
For nearly four decades, U.S. presidents have issued executive orders requiring agencies to conduct comprehensive regulatory impact analysis (RIA) for significant regulations to ensure that regulatory decisions solve social problems in a cost-beneficial manner. Yet experience demonstrates that agency RIAs often fail to live up to the standards enunciated in executive orders and OMB guidance. We suggest four managerial changes that could increase OIRA’s leverage.
Codifying the Cost-Benefit State
By: Brian F. Mannix & Bridget C.E. Dooling
In this article we focus on the executive’s authority to write a cross-government “rule-on-rules” to govern regulatory analysis, including benefit-cost analysis and the courts’ authority to enforce such a rule.
OIRA Past & Future
By: Susan E. Dudley
While some of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affair’s functions are statutorily granted, others—notably those related to regulatory policy—derive from presidential executive orders. This paper reflects on OIRA's evolution over the almost 40 years since the Paperwork Reduction Act created it in 1980 to understand what has made it so durable.
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