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
Public Comment on OMB's 2017 Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations
By: Brian F. Mannix, Sofie E. Miller, & Susan E. Dudley
The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center improves regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. As part of its mission, the GW Regulatory Studies Center conducts careful and independent analyses to assess rulemaking proposals from the perspective of the public interest. This comment on the Office of Management and Budget’s 2017 Draft Report to Congress offers suggestions for improving the information value of the Report, as well as the evidence on which regulatory policies depend, and does not represent the views of any particular affected party or special interest.
Where's the Spam? Mass Comment Campaigns in Agency Rulemaking
By: Steven J. Balla, Alexander R. Beck, William C. Cubbison, & Aryamala Prasad
This article examines the occurrence and nature of mass comment campaigns in rulemaking at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between 2012 and 2016. The analysis demonstrates that campaigns of more duplicate or near-duplicate comments occur across issue areas under EPA jurisdictions, and that broad societal constituencies—such as environmentalists—are more active in sponsoring campaigns than specific interests negatively affected by stringent regulations. These findings in some respects confirm and in other respects challenge existing understandings of mass comment campaign participation in administrative rulemaking.
Organization, Process, and Agency Rulemaking
By Christopher Carrigan & Russell Mills
In this working paper, Christopher Carrigan and Russell Mills demonstrate how variation in the design of rulemaking procedures inside regulatory agencies affects the resulting rules. By employing a novel dataset tracking job functions of agency rule contacts for over 200 economically significant rules, the authors find that expanding the breadth of personnel types closely involved in a rulemaking reduces both the time it takes to promulgate the rule and the resulting detail with which it is presented. This work demonstrates how theories describing the implications of assigning team participants distinct roles in private organizations translate to government rulemaking.
Public Comment on Reforming DOE's "Process Rule" for Energy Efficiency Standards
By Sofie E. Miller
In response to the Department of Energy request for public comment on the proposed modifications to its "Process Rule," Sofie E. Miller filed recommendations regarding improvements to direct final rulemaking, retrospective review, and the analysis that supports the Department's rules.
Public Comment on EPA's Proposed Rule: State Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Electric Utility Generating Units
Brian Mannix filed a Public Interest Comment with EPA, recommending four features that the agency should incorporate into a possible replacement for the agency’s Clean Power Plan. First, the agency should set standards for CO2 intensity, rather than a mass-based cap on CO2 emissions. Second, the standards should be tiered by technology. Third, the agency should allow trading of CO2 credits, both within and across technology categories. Fourth, the agency should incorporate a safety valve mechanism that keeps the price of CO2 credits commensurate with the domestic social cost of carbon. Such a rule could function as a “last-ton tax,” with many of the economic efficiencies of a carbon tax, but without exceeding the boundaries of EPA’s regulatory authority.
Benefit-Cost Analysis and Emerging Technologies
By Brian F. Mannix
The Hastings Center has published “Benefit-Cost Analysis and Emerging Technologies,” by RSC’s Brian Mannix, as part of a special report funded by the National Science Foundation. The full report explores the governance of newly developed techniques in bioengineering – such as the ability to modify a species in the wild, or render it (a mosquito, for example) extinct. Mannix argues that, properly understood, benefit-cost analysis is an appropriate technique for determining which actions are in the public interest. He also cautions against a “precautionary” approach that would shift the burden onto new technologies to demonstrate safety before they can be used.
A Proposed Framework for Evidence-Based Regulation
By Marcus Peacock, Sofie E. Miller, & Daniel R. Pérez
Policymakers and scholars have given serious thought to how evidence-based approaches can improve policymaking, but using evidence to improve regulatory outcomes requires a separate framework than the one currently in use. This paper details how the regulatory process differs from other federal policymaking and establishes a framework for evidence-based regulation (EBR) to improve regulatory outcomes by planning for, collecting, and using evidence throughout the life a regulation. The authors discuss the main barriers that regulatory agencies face in implementing an EBR approach and advance concrete proposals for overcoming these barriers.
Book Review of Andrew W. Lo's "Review of Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought"
By Susan E. Dudley
What drives our responses to risk and uncertainty, and how can we improve them? In his 2017 book, Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought, MIT Sloan finance professor Andrew Lo answers that question using evolutionary concepts and insights, including competition, innovation, reproduction, and adaptation.
International Regulatory Indexes at a Glance
By Zhoudan Xie
This Regulatory Insight provides an overview of how regulation is measured and compared across countries, compares the available measures, and examines where the U.S. stands relative to other countries. Internationally-comparable measures of regulation are mostly constructed through the composite index approach. This Insight reviews five international regulatory indexes measuring economic freedom, business/competition friendliness, and social regulation. The indexes differ significantly in terms of the coverage of regulation, methodologies and data. Even indexes measuring the same dimension of regulation can present different results, depending on the specific variables and data chosen.
2017 Regulatory Year in Review
By Zhoudan Xie & Sofie E. Miller
This Regulatory Insight highlights ten important regulatory and deregulatory themes that garnered attention—and changed the regulatory landscape—in 2017. Regulatory policy was a focal point of 2017, and notable executive orders, rulemaking, and legislation all contributed to this theme--including the Congressional Review Act, net neutrality, the President's deregulatory agenda, and more.
Regulatory Studies Center
Columbian College of Arts & Sciences
805 21st St. NW
Washington, DC 20052
[email protected]
