Journal Articles & Working Papers

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.


Regulating Agencies

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.

Regulatory Oversight and Benefit-Cost Analysis: A Historical Perspective

This article examines the evolution of executive regulatory oversight and analysis from the 1970s to today, exploring the reasons for its durability and whether the current imposition of a regulatory budget challenges the bipartisan nature of regulatory practice.

Designing a Choice Architecture for Regulators

The emergence of behavioral public administration has led to increasing calls for public managers and policy makers to consider predictable cognitive biases when regulating individual behaviors or market transactions.

Regulatory Impact Analysis and Litigation Risk

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.

Regulatory Oversight and Benefit-Cost Analysis: A Historical Perspective

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Executive Office of the President coordinates the federal government’s regulatory agenda, reviews executive branch agencies’ draft regulations, and oversees government-wide information quality, peer review, privacy, and statistical policies.

Pursuing Consilience

Behavioral public administration (BPA) research aspires not only to draw on developments in behavioral science but also, importantly, to address central themes in public administration. By focusing a symposium on bureaucratic red tape, administrative burden, and regulation, we encouraged BPA scholarship to engage with fundamental public administration topics that are also relevant for the broader literature on organizations and management.

Coproduction of Regulations Under the Administrative Procedure Act

Aligica et al. (2019) posit that a form of public administration founded in the classical liberal tradition should recognize value heterogeneity, which would create a need for coproduction of rules and polycentricity in the production of rules. Utilizing a dataset of 130 economically significant executive branch regulations proposed between 2008 and 2013, this paper assesses whether US regulators act in a manner consistent with the predictions of their theory.