These documents are the apex of the Center's academic research. Our working papers are authored with the intention of publishing them in peer-reviewed journals at a later date, and our journal articles are setting the standard in their academic disciplines.
Time to Give Bootleggers the Boot!
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an important and well-defined mission with broad public support. Too often, however, the Agency has sought to strengthen its position by aligning itself with politically powerful rent-seeking interests. My wish for the Agency on its fiftieth birthday is that it stays focused on its own mission and remembers that old adage: “Dilution is not the solution to pollution.”
Improvements in SEC Economic Analysis
Several D.C. Circuit decisions that remanded regulations to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between 2005 and 2011 provide a natural experiment that permits researchers to identify the correlation between judicial review, the quality of regulatory agencies’ economic analysis, and its use in regulatory decisions. SEC economic analysis improved substantially following the issuance of new staff guidance on economic analysis in 2012.
The Durability of Regulatory Oversight
This article 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. It finds that regardless of their philosophy, presidents need an entity like OIRA to address the principal‐agent problem they face in managing the disparate agencies within the executive branch.
Nudging the Nudger: Toward a Choice Architecture for Regulators
Behavioral research has shown that individuals do not always behave in ways that match textbook definitions of rationality but are subject to cognitive biases that may lead to systematic errors in judgments and decisions.
This article compares government transparency and public participation in policymaking across China and the United States. The analysis specifically focuses on the notice and comment process—government announcement of proposed policies and solicitation of public feedback—at the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This article examines the institutionalization of online consultation, a prominent instrument of governance reform in contemporary China in which government organizations make public draft laws and regulations and solicit input from interested parties prior to finalizing decisions. The article specifically analyses the extent to which online consultation is a durable governance reform that enhances transparency and participation in policymaking. The analysis focuses on the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and Guangzhou Municipal Government (GMG), leading organizations in the implementation of online consultation.
This article examines agency responsiveness to mass comment campaigns – collections of identical and near‐duplicate comments sponsored by organizations and submitted by group members and supporters – in administrative rulemaking in the United States.
Retail Electric Competition and Natural Monopoly: The Shocking Truth
Regulated monopoly remains the dominant paradigm for electricity retailing in the United States. Scholarly research, however, clearly refutes the idea that monopoly is the most efficient market structure for retail electricity sales.
Statutory Delegation, Agency Authority, and the Asymmetry of Impact Analysis
This paper documents the diverse degrees of discretionary authority Congress grants US executive branch agencies. It then presents a case study that systematically compares the quality of impact analysis that informed legislative and regulatory decisions on positive train control, a technology mandated by statute in 2008.
Scholars of regulation generally view the procedures that agencies must follow when promulgating rules as instruments by which political principals control bureaucratic agents. Much like political principals attempt to use procedural checks to constrain regulatory agencies’ actions, these same agencies employ various regulatory instruments to influence the decisions of private agents, especially firms.
