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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.
This article examines the sponsorship and content of mass comment campaigns in administrative rulemaking in the United States. Mass comment campaigns consist of identical and near‐duplicate comments sponsored by organizations and submitted by group members and supporters to government agencies in response to proposed rules. Drawing from research on interest group lobbying, it is posited that organizations of all types sponsor mass comment campaigns, but 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
The diverse policy decisions confronting decision-makers today demand “dynamic BCA,” analytic frameworks that incorporate uncertainties and trade-offs across policy areas, recognizing that: perceptions of risks can be uninformed, misinformed, or inaccurate; risk characterization can suffer from ambiguity; and experts’ tendency to focus on one risk at a time may blind policymakers to important trade-offs.
Codifying the Cost-Benefit State
Benefit-cost balancing is now a dominant paradigm in administrative law for evaluating federal agencies’ exercise of delegated regulatory discretion. In response to increased scrutiny upon judicial review, agencies have taken steps to firm up their benefit-cost analyses. Despite multiple Executive Orders and supplementary guidance, neither executive nor legislative action has produced a clear set of justiciable standards against which courts can evaluate agency analyses for adequacy.