Recent Commentaries
Publications
Regulatory Studies Center scholars conduct applied research to understand regulatory policy and practice from a public interest perspective. Many of our publications fall into the following categories:
Recent Publications
Measuring Costs and Benefits of Privacy Controls: Conceptual Issues and Empirical Estimates
1/30/19 - Co-director Joe Cordes and senior policy analyst Daniel Pérez's article published in The Journal of Law, Economics & Policy draws on the economics of privacy literature to summarize why the costs and benefits of privacy controls should be measured in principle, discusses previous attempts to do so, and generates useful estimates of consumers' valuation of privacy.
Improving Regulatory Benefit-Cost Analysis
By Susan E. Dudley and Brian F. Mannix
Across developed countries, benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is the principal public policy tool for laying out available information in a way that allows policy makers to make balanced, efficient regulatory decisions in the face of limited resources. However, BCA has limitations. This article examines the institutional and technical factors limiting the use of BCA as a tool for improving regulatory policy and offers some recommendations for reducing those barriers.
2018 Year in Review: Top Ten Regulatory Developments
By Mark Febrizio and Zhoudan Xie
Just as in 2017, regulatory policy continued to be a focal point of 2018 with key actions ranging from proposed rules to one agency’s establishment of a new economics office to inform regulatory decisions. While not comprehensive, this Regulatory Insight highlights ten important developments related to regulation that occurred in 2018.
Enduring Principles of Sound Regulatory Analysis
By Mark Febrizio
The economic foundations of Executive Order 12,866 underscore its continued importance in regulatory review.
(Article originally published in The Regulatory Review, a publication of the Penn Program on Regulation.)
Bootleggers & Baptists: The Experience of Another Regulatory Economist
By Susan E. Dudley
Bruce Yandle conceived the theory of Bootleggers and Baptists after working in government as a young economist in the late 1970s and 1980s. Forty years later, his insights regarding the forces that converge to support government intervention continue to explain many regulatory observations. Applying the theory to her own experience, Dudley finds that while the B&B phenomenon is universal, the nature of winning Baptist arguments can vary depending on administration, and that regulatory institutions can reinforce or counteract B&B pressures.
Spotlight: HHS Entries in OIRA’s Latest Regulatory Reform Report
By Bridget C.E. Dooling
OIRA recently issued a progress report on EO 13771, the two-for-one initiative, with a present value estimate of $23.4 billion in savings due to actions taken in FY 2018. More than half of these savings came from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). This Regulatory Insight takes a deep dive into the HHS figures and finds significant Medicare paperwork savings, but that the other deregulatory initiatives fall short of providing the kind of regulatory relief that President Trump has promised.
Public Interest Comment: NTIA's Approach to Consumer Privacy
By Daniel R. Pérez
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a request for public comments on developing the administration's approach to consumer privacy. This public interest comment provides an overview of the agency's proposed approach to guide federal policymaking, and provides three core recommendations (1) Privacy regulation should be based on consumers' value, (2) the benefits of regulation should exceed social costs, and (3) future research should be focused on improving benefit-cost analysis of privacy regulations.
Public Interest Comment: SAFE Vehicles Rule
By Julian Morris
Executive Director of the International Center for Law & Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Reason Foundation - provides insights on the effects of the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Rule and the preliminary regulatory impact analysis thoroughly completed by the EPA and NHTSA. This public interest comment discusses the likely effects of the rule on vehicle fuel economy, fuel consumption, the cost of new and used vehicles, safety, and the environment. The author's findings suggest that the new rule will save billions of dollars in economic costs, potentially decrease traffic fatalities, and is unlikely to have a significant negative effect on the environment.
Public Interest Comment: IRS's Proposed Rule on SALT Credits
By Jerry Ellig
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has proposed a regulation that would prevent all individual taxpayers from claiming a federal charitable deduction if the taxpayer received a state tax credit equivalent to more than 15 percent of the donation. This comment explains why the proposed regulation is much broader than necessary to address the real problem the IRS seeks to solve: state tax credit programs designed explicitly to aid taxpayers in avoiding the cap on deductibility of state and local taxes.
OMB's Reform Plan and the Tradeoffs of Government Reorganization
By Christopher Carrigan & Mark Febrizio
In June, OMB published an organizational reform plan, offering more than 80 recommendations that detail government-wide and agency-specific changes. Although the plan’s goal to make government operations more efficient is a noble one, research and experience demonstrates that designing agency operations involves sometimes unavoidable tradeoffs. Streamlining operations can produce real benefits, but these may come at the expense of impeding an agency’s ability to formulate clear objectives and weakening measures in place to ensure services are delivered correctly. Thus, entering into any restructuring with a complete understanding of its ramifications is critical to realizing its objectives and promoting its durability.
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