Increasing Transparency in Considering Costs and Benefits in the Rulemaking Process -- Update
Attached is a comment that I filed in response to a recent EPA ANPRM to increase transparency in considering costs and benefits in the rulemaking process. I am filing this same comment in the CEQ docket as well, because of the parallels between CEQ’s efforts to bring consistency and transparency to the NEPA process and EPA’s efforts to pursue the same goals with respect to rulemaking.
EPA's Benefit-Cost Analysis in the Rulemaking Process
The EPA is “soliciting comment on whether and how EPA should promulgate regulations that provide a consistent and transparent interpretation relating to the consideration of weighing costs
EPA's ANPRM on Increasing Transparency in Benefit-Cost Analysis
In this Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Environmental Protection Agency sets a worthwhile goal of improving the consistency and transparency of the agency’s use of economic analyses to inform its rulemaking decisions.
Benefit-Cost Analysis as a Check on Administrative Discretion
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.
Improving Regulatory Science: A Case Study of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards
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.”
Trump Administration Picks up the Regulatory Pace in its Second Year
The first 6 months of the Trump administration’s second year reveal a quicker pace than its first, though still slower compared to the Obama administration.
FCC Process Reform Underscores Need for Economic Review at Independent Regulatory Agencies
At a June 2018 policy seminar, Chairman O’Rielly focused his remarks on the next steps in the FCC’s process reform efforts.
Agricultural Research and 2018 Farm Bill Implementation
On June 13, 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released what it describes as a “Cost-Benefit Analysis” of the proposed relocation of NIFA and ERS from Washington DC to Kansas City.
Increasing Consistency and Transparency in EPA's Benefit Cost Analysis
In this ANPRM, EPA seeks comment on the appropriate role for regulatory analysis in decisions authorized by the different statutes EPA administers. It explicitly does not seek comment on “how best to conduct the underlying analysis of regulatory actions."
