Organizational Process, Rulemaking Pace, and the Shadow of Judicial Review
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.
Consultation, Participation, and the Institutionalization of Governance Reform in China
This article examines the institutionalization—persistence, substantive development, and standardization of best procedures—of online consultation in China, a prominent instrument of governance reform in which government officials provide interested parties with opportunities to comment on draft laws and regulations over the Internet.
Measuring Costs and Benefits of Privacy Controls
Considering public policies to balance the collection, sale, and use of personal data with individuals' right to privacy
Improving Regulatory Benefit-Cost Analysis
This article briefly reviews the process by which regulations are developed in the United States and the role for BCA. It then examines the institutional and technical factors limiting the use of BCA as a tool for improving regulatory policy. It concludes with some recommendations.
Measuring Energy Efficiency: Accounting for the Hidden Costs of Product Failure
DOE sets energy efficiency standards for a wide variety of consumer appliances to achieve a “significant conservation of energy.” Advocates for these standards claim that households have realized substantial cost savings with the existing standards. There is a substantial literature—although no consensus—on the effects of energy efficiency regulation, however.
Statutory Rulemaking Considerations and Judicial Review of Regulatory Impact Analysis
This paper examines the various statutory standards that require agencies to conduct some form of economic analysis and explores which standards correlate with more rigorous judicial review when a rule is challenged in court and with more rigorous regulatory analysis by the agency preparing the rule.
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.”
A Proposed Framework for Evidence-Based Regulation
The systematic application of evidence-based approaches to improve policymaking has received serious treatment by both scholars and policymakers, but its successful implementation to improve regulatory outcomes requires a separate framework.