Commentaries & Insights

Our Commentaries and Insights are short-form publications intended to distill long-form research and synthesize current policymaking activity into easily understood concepts.


Unintended Consequences of GDPR

Recent studies explore the reasons for troubling and unintended consequence of GDPR on competition and market concentration.

Mass, Computer-Generated, and Fraudulent Comments

The Administrative Conference of the United States requested proposals for a new project on “Mass, Computer-Generated, and Fraudulent Comments."

Race and Regulation

The public comment process offers a way to place evidence in an agency’s record that it might not otherwise consider, such as race-related effects.

Analyzing Agency Budgets for Regulatory Spending

This Regulatory Insight analyzes four Trump administration budget proposals to identify notable recurring trends in regulatory spending. Budget data indicate that spending on homeland security regulation has risen, while outlays for environment and energy regulation have fallen. Comparing the president’s budget proposals with actual outlays suggests where the administration has been largely successful in accomplishing its political goals and where Congress has hindered those goals.

The Discounting Dilemma

OMB's original guidance on discounting from 1988 can help to resolve many misunderstandings about discounting that have developed since then.

2020 Spring Agenda

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) released its semiannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. The Agenda lists all regulatory actions currently being developed by federal agencies.