A wide range of areas—including administrative procedures, environment and energy, nutrition benefits, immigration, and healthcare—experienced important regulatory developments during the past year.
Publications
The GW Regulatory Studies Center scholars regularly conduct applied research to understand regulatory policy and practice from a public interest perspective. Our content often takes the form of public interest comments, formal testimony, working papers, policy insights, and short commentaries analyzing the most pressing issues in regulatory policy. View the rest of our material by the different types of publications listed on this page or our research areas.
What We Publish
Journal Articles & Working Papers
Long-form publications intended for academic audiences that take a deep dive into a particular aspect of regulatory policy.
Public Comments & Testimonies
Scholarly analysis of the potential effects of particular rulemakings from federal agencies, and advice to Congress on how to improve the rulemaking process.
Commentaries & Insights
Short-form publications intended for all audiences which provide easy to access analysis of regulatory policy.
Books & Reports
Formal publications, often completed with other leading organizations and individuals, providing a thorough understanding of regulations and the rulemaking process.
Newsletters
The weekly Regulation Digest contains everything you need to know about regulatory policy today, and our monthly Center Update gives you all of the latest from our team.
For accessible charts and supporting data that you can use in your own publications or presentations, visit the Reg Stats page.
Latest Publications
Designing a Choice Architecture for Regulators
The emergence of behavioral public administration has led to increasing calls for public managers and policy makers to consider predictable cognitive biases when regulating individual behaviors or market transactions.
Regulatory Oversight and Benefit-Cost Analysis: A Historical Perspective
This article examines the evolution of executive regulatory oversight and analysis from the 1970s to today, exploring the reasons for its durability and whether the current imposition of a regulatory budget challenges the bipartisan nature of regulatory practice.
STB's Railroad Revenue Adequacy
The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 deregulated most freight rail rates but left the Interstate Commerce Commission (and now the STB) with responsibility for ensuring that rail rates are “just and reasonable” for shippers who lack good transportation alternatives to a single railroad.
Regulatory Impact Analysis and Litigation Risk
This paper explores the role that the regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) that agencies are required to prepare for important proposed rules play in decisions by courts about whether these rules should be upheld when they are challenged after promulgation.
Regulatory Oversight and Benefit-Cost Analysis: A Historical Perspective
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Executive Office of the President coordinates the federal government’s regulatory agenda, reviews executive branch agencies’ draft regulations, and oversees government-wide information quality, peer review, privacy, and statistical policies.
STB's Rate Review and Market Dominance -- Reply Comment
In two related proceedings, the STB has proposed a streamlined approach to assessing whether a railroad has market dominance and a final offer process for small rate disputes.
Behavioral public administration (BPA) research aspires not only to draw on developments in behavioral science but also, importantly, to address central themes in public administration. By focusing a symposium on bureaucratic red tape, administrative burden, and regulation, we encouraged BPA scholarship to engage with fundamental public administration topics that are also relevant for the broader literature on organizations and management.
Better Economic Analysis Can Reduce Regulators’ Litigation Risks
Recent research sheds light on the relationship between the quality of an agency’s economic analysis and the risk that a regulation will be overturned in court.
OIRA’s Regulatory Reform Report for Fiscal Year 2019
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) released its annual Regulatory Reform Status Report on December 6, 2019. The report, which in the past has been published along with the Fall Unified Agenda, compiles executive branch agencies’ continued efforts to comply with Executive Order 13771.