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.
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.
