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 Interest Comment on The U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Combusted Cigarettes
By David Zorn, Ph.D.
In a comment filed on the "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Level of Combusted Cigarettes," Zorn observes that the FDA's plan to develop a maximum nicotine level for cigarettes is a novel and creative approach to promote public health. He also examines some drawbacks of the FDA's plan, including the speculative and unproven nature of the underlying hypothesis, as well as the limitations of removing access to only combustible sources of nicotine.
Public Interest Comment on The Food Safety and Inspection Service’s proposed rule: Egg Products Inspection Regulations
By Richard B. Belzer, Independent Consultant
This public interest comment provides an overview of the Food Safety Inspection Service’s (FSIS) proposed rule requiring official plants that process egg products to develop and implement Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Systems and Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures. FSIS would eliminate certain existing requirements, and add new labeling requirements. The comment reviews the justifications for the rulemaking change, and provides answers to how it would affect previous rules, industry growth, and foodborne illness rates.
A Taxonomy of Regulatory Forms
By: Zhoudan Xie & Daniel R. Pérez
This Regulatory Insight addresses the information gap in how regulations are measured when determining their effect on economic growth and other macroeconomic measures by developing a taxonomy of regulatory forms. In partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this framework allows regulations to be classified by the form they employ to achieve the stated regulatory outcomes. We expect this taxonomy to also be applicable to industries outside of agriculture, and to be utilized by researchers and analysts in a wide range of fields as a framework for informing research on the relative effectiveness of different regulatory forms to address market and social problems.
Public Interest Comment on The Environmental Protection Agency’s Proposed Rule Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science
By: Susan E. Dudley
The EPA’s “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” proposed rule seeks to improve the data and models that underlie the rulemaking process by making them publicly available for further analysis and validation. This public interest comment examines the merits of the proposed rule and how it relates to existing practices. These remarks conclude with a case for why clearer explanations of rulemaking rationale would encourage more openness and constructive discussion, ultimately improve policy decisions, and engender greater acceptance of policy choices.
FY 2019 Regulators' Budget: More for Homeland Security, Less for Environmental Regulation
By: Susan E. Dudley and Melinda Warren
This year's annual report finds that overall spending on regulatory agencies will be maintained at 2018 levels. The total request of $71 billion in regulatory outlays is a 0.1% increase year-to-year when adjusted for inflation. The report also finds that the number of regulators would fall slightly from 280,872 to 280,269 - a 0.2% reduction compared to 2018. Despite the small changes across agencies overall there are substantial changes within particular agencies. The Dept. of Homeland Security, Food & Drug Administration, and Housing & Urban Development will see 4.8%, 5%, and 11% increases in federal outlays, respectively. On the other hand, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will receive 10.4% less, and the Environmental Protection Agency will be spending 24.9% less than in 2018.
Public Comment on the EPA's Proposed Rule Repeal of Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units
By: Brian F. Mannix
The EPA has proposed to repeal the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions guidelines for electric generating units issued on October 23, 2015—better known as the Clean Power Plan (CPP). The Agency has also sought comment separately on what, if anything, ought to replace it. This comment, often drawing on earlier comments, will focus on the Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) that supported EPA’s 2015 CPP final rule, and outlines those areas where the agency made major errors in the 2015 RIA, and where it could go further to improve the analysis.
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.
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