Although technological and political innovations have reduced many of the traditional barriers to international trade and investment flows, regulatory differences between countries persist as lingering barriers to trade. Countries agree that notifying each other of upcoming regulations that may...
The U.S. leads the world in scientific discovery and medical innovation, and recent studies suggest that for many clinical conditions, U.S. patients have outcomes superior to or equivalent to those in other industrialized countries. However, U.S health insurance and medical care are very...
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently published a proposed rule that
would require hybrid and electric vehicles to make a minimum amount of sound while being
operated at speeds slower than 18 miles per hour. Because they use an electric motor, hybrid and
electric vehicles...
The comment period closed yesterday on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed rule requiring disclosure of the ratio of CEO pay to the median pay of all workers in the firm. In a public interest comment filed with the SEC, I argue there is little economic justification for this...
Many participants, regulators, and observers of commodity and security markets have a sense that something in recent years has gone awry: that the explosive growth of high-frequency digital trading is somehow excessive, costly, unfair, and/or destabilizing. Several ideas for changing the rules...
Recent headlines and scientific articles projecting significant human health benefits from changes in exposures too often depend on unvalidated subjective expert judgments and modeling assumptions, especially about the causal interpretation of statistical associations. Some of these assessments...
As a part of its Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing biofuel blending targets for 2014, 2015, and 2016. The RFS requires refiners to blend specific amounts of renewable fuels into transportation fuel, such as gasoline and diesel.
The RFS...
The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center improves regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. As part of its mission, the Center conducts careful and independent analyses to assess rulemaking proposals from the perspective of the public interest. This comment on...
Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit sent the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) back to the Environmental Protection Agency for revision. The court found that the
rule, which would limit emissions from power plants in Texas and Eastern states, was unconstitutional because...
Since the formation of the U.S. federal regulatory system, regulations have had a significant influence on marketplace competition. Regulations often seek to improve competition by restraining monopolies; others tend to reduce competition by establishing one-size-fits-all standards for consumer...
Prepared Statement of Sofie E. Miller, Senior Policy Analyst, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on The Federal Government on Autopilot: Delegation of Regulatory Authority to an Unaccountable Bureaucracy before the United States House of Representatives Judiciary...
This report, commissioned by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), investigates agency practices in soliciting, circulating, and responding to public comments during the federal rulemaking process. Specifically, the report develops recommendations regarding the following...
Among the priorities highlighted in the introductory chapters of President Obama’s proposed
2014 Budget is a commitment to “a regulatory strategy that protects the safety and health of all Americans, while promoting continued economic growth and job creation.” The Budget claims that by carefully...
In September, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a proposed rule setting energy efficiency standards for 49 different types of commercial refrigeration equipment, establishing maximum allowable energy usage standards as a function of either refrigerated volume or total display area for each...
The Internet and new media tools make two-way sharing of government information and public feedback not only possible, but also more convenient than previous paper methods. Public consultation is the solicitation of public participation in the form of public comments during the rulemaking...
The Office of Management and Budget quietly released its draft 2013 Report to Congress on the
Benefits and Costs of Regulations on Friday, April 19, covering regulatory activity through the end (September 30) of fiscal year 2012. Recall that, as the presidential election approached, the White...
My chapter in a new book published this week, Does Regulation Kill Jobs?, explores some of the reasons why the human welfare metric, as it is typically calculated in a BCA, appears to be insensitive to the employment effects that loom so large in the perceptions of the public and its elected...
Prepared Statement of Susan E. Dudley, The George Washington Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on A Review of Regulatory Reform Proposals before the United States Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee on September 16, 2015.
In a 2011 report, the Environmental Protection Agency projected that its retrospective review efforts would save $1.5 billion over five years, but are the American people getting what the Agency promised? A recent working paper by the GW Regulatory Studies Center suggests that the unprecedented...
The Energy Policy and Conservation Act authorizes the Department of Energy (DOE) to establish energy efficiency standards for consumer appliances that are both technologically feasible and economically justified, while also resulting in a “significant conservation of energy.” To justify its...
Attempts by politicians to control bureaucratic decisions include both structural (how is the agency making the decision organized) and procedural (what rules must they follow when making the decision). But how do these procedures interact? This article examines the interaction between...
As part of a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center produced a five-chapter report on regulatory differences between the United States (U.S.) and the European Union (EU) and their effects on...
Since President Obama issued Executive Order 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory
Review in early 2011, some onlookers have wondered how and to what extent regulators will
consider human dignity as a regulatory analysis input. The executive order stressed the role of
both quantitative...
In 1981, President Reagan’s Executive Order 12291 gave the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) responsibility for reviewing federal agencies’ regulations before their publication in the Federal Register. Three decades and four presidential administrations later, OIRA continues to...
This comment on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) proposed rule broadening its use of discretionary parole authority to facilitate foreign entrepreneurs to oversee and grow a U.S. startup entity does not represent the views of any particular affected party or special interest, but is...
The impact of regulation on innovation and entrepreneurship is a concern all over the world. The regulatory environment in which firms interact can hinder or contribute to the creation and early stage growth of new businesses as well as to the innovative process within a market. This document...
OMB’s 2015 Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations (the Report) provides the public valuable information both on estimates of the effects of major executive branch regulations and also on OMB’s focus and priorities. It also offers valuable recommendations that we...
President-elect Trump has promised to “reform the entire regulatory code to ensure that we keep jobs and wealth in America.”To that end, scholars at the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center offer a list of 10 reforms to regulatory processes that could be accomplished through...
When it comes to environmental regulation, no one is immune to the temptation to put a spin on science to advance a policy goal. While the media will decry the politicization of science – when political decision-makers attempt to distort what scientific studies conclude, problems also arise when...
A new Government Accountability Office report finds that federal agencies did not go through
notice-and-comment rulemaking for over one-third of the major rules issued between 2003 and 2010. This means that a significant percentage of new regulations expected to have an impact of $100 million or...
The scope and reach of regulation is growing, and along with it, public concern that there may be too much regulation of private activity. (See annual Gallup poll showing that more respondents are concerned about too much regulation than too little.)
In response to this concern, President...
The Department of Energy (“DOE”) is seeking public comment on whether it was appropriate to rely on an estimate of the “social cost of carbon” (“SCC”) in a final rulemaking without undergoing public comment. When DOE published a proposed rule to set energy efficiency standards for microwave ovens...
For an upcoming 3-day weekend, my 17-year old son and I won’t think twice about hopping on a flight to visit family in Massachusetts. When I was my son’s age, such an excursion would have been an unthinkable luxury; air travel was reserved for businessmen or the wealthy. Alfred Kahn, the person...
Prepared Statement of Sofie E. Miller & Daniel R. Pérez, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on Examining How Small Businesses Confront and Shape Regulations Before the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee United States Senate on March 29, 2017.
Policymakers in the United States show persistent interest in improving the accountability of federal regulatory agencies. Before mandating further requirements, Congress and the President should (1) identify government-wide accountability initiatives that were already attempted at regulatory...
On September 20th, the Environmental Protection Agency released a much-anticipated proposed rule that would limit the emissions of CO2 by new coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, or electric utility generating units (EGUs). This proposal is one of many regulatory actions being undertaken by...
In this working paper, Korok Ray proposes a microeconomic model of a bank that acts as a financial intermediary engaging in maturity transformation, borrowing short-term debt from a market of investors to fund a long term loan to a firm. The bank installs a manager who exerts costly effort to...
The 113th Congress is considering various bills to reform how regulations are developed, analyzed, and reviewed. The GW Regulatory Studies Center tracks and classifies these bills based on information provided by the Library of Congress. The legislation is selected if it concerns improvements to...
Each summer Washington DC is taken over by interns, the majority of whom are unpaid students looking to gain valuable experience on Capitol Hill, a Federal Agency, or one of the many nonprofits and businesses in the area. Some are willing to forgo payment for their work and often go into debt to...
A new issue paper from the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST), released Monday, finds that while the “precautionary principle” (PP) “has superficial appeal on initial impression, …when put to the test [it] actually lacks the substance and content necessary to guide realistic...
Prepared Statement of Sofie E. Miller, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on Home Appliance Energy Efficiency Standards under the Department of Energy–Stakeholder Perspectives before the United States Senate June 10, 2016.
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...
Regulations are a powerful tool for achieving policy goals and the Unified Agenda of Regulatory
and Deregulatory Actions (Agenda) has for years served as the public’s first notice of the federal government’s planned regulatory activities. Rules issued by agencies such as the...
Soon after taking office, President Obama sent a memorandum to the heads of Executive Departments
and Agencies requesting their recommendations on whether and how to change President Clinton’s
Executive Order No. 12866 “Regulatory Planning and Review.” Clinton’s Executive Order established...
On June 4, 2015, Susan E. Dudley appeared before a Roundtable Discussion of the Senate Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management and gave testimony on practical solutions for improving the federal regulatory process. During the discussion, members of the subcommittee mentioned the...
Environmental Protection Agency regulations are sometimes presented as economically efficient, correcting a market failure and maximizing net social benefits; other times they appear to subordinate that goal and instead pursue the single-minded objective of reduced pollution. And
sometimes they...
According to DOE’s proposed rule, furnace fans achieving these energy efficiency levels “are already commercially available for at least some, if not most, product classes covered by this proposal.” That is, in many cases, consumers already have the option to purchase a higher-cost,...
The federal government issued its Regulatory Plan and Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions on December 20, 2010. Though likely unnoticed by most Americans busy with holiday preparations, these documents offer insights into the number and range of regulatory activities we...
In a recent meeting, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reviewed legislation purported to improve oversight of regulatory agencies, a task delegated to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a little known—yet industrious—group within the Office of...
This comment on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s policy guidance on
driverless car technology does not represent the views of any particular affected party or special
interest, but is designed to evaluate the effect of NHTSA’s policy on overall societal welfare.The National...
In a recent study (forthcoming in the journal Public Choice), Bentley Coffey, Bob Tollison, and I found a robust, positive correlation between the federal government’s regulatory activity and the performance of the capital’s National Football League team, the Washington Redskins. Why would any...
Until it ended last week, the government shutdown had a visible effect on the regulatory activities of federal agencies. Due to the appropriations lapse, many agencies discontinued work they did not deem necessary to protect human life and property, which meant that most regulations underway were...
The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform held hearings this week on the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA). Congress enacted UMRA to “curb the practice of imposing unfunded Federal...
Unfunded federal regulatory mandates on state, local, and tribal governments continue to present a fiscal challenge to those governments. Congress is considering several proposed amendments to the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, or UMRA, to hold federal agencies more accountable for the costs they...
Prepared Statement of Susan E. Dudley, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center. Hearing on Examining Practical Solutions to Improve the Federal Regulatory Process before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management Roundtable Discussion,...
Since the inception of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), considerable emphasis has been placed on the use of prospective policy analysis tools that aim to inform environmental decisions, including cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment. However, compared to the prevalence of ex...
The Center provides these comments regarding question numbers 1, 10, and 15-19 presented in the Supplementary Information section of the Commission on
Evidence-Based Policymaking’s (the Commission’s) Federal Register notice issued on
September 14, 2016. Regulation may have a larger impact on...
To accomplish his promised overhaul of the U.S. regulatory system, President Trump will need the help of a small office that most people outside of Washington have never heard of. The Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA, pronounced Oh-Eye-Ruh), established in 1980, oversees the...
Prepared Statement of Susan E. Dudley, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on Agency Use of Science in the Rulemaking Process: Proposals for Improving Transparency and Accountability for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory...
The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center improves regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. As part of its mission, the Center conducts careful and independent analyses to assess regulatory actions from the perspective of the public interest. This comment on...
Prepared Statement by Sofie E. Miller, Senior Policy Analyst, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on Oversight of the Renewable Fuel Standard before the Environment and Public Works Committee on February 24, 2016.
Many states have revolving door regulations that restrict the private sector employment of
former public sector employees. These regulations are often applied to government workers responsible for regulating industries such as utilities. The purpose of these regulations is to
prevent government...
Should federal regulatory benefit-cost analysis (BCA) include benefits realized by residents of other nations? When it comes to valuing the effects of climate change, the federal government has recently decided that it should. A May 2013 technical update of an interagency working group...
OECD countries rely on regulatory tools to manage potential risks from exposure to targeted chemicals. Ex-ante regulatory impact assessment has a long tradition in many OECD countries, with established analytical steps and oversight as well as opportunities for public engagement to hold...
Last week, President Obama nominated Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chief Economist Howard Shelanski to be the next Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). If confirmed by the Senate, Shelanski would fill the...
Recent commentary on our Regulatory Studies Center Working Paper, “Regulation, Jobs, and Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis” made the valid point that inclusion of a time trend in our estimates would improve the robustness of our model. Thus in this commentary, we update our preferred model...
The benefits and costs of regulations, individually and in the aggregate, are notoriously hard to measure. In an attempt to measure the size and scope of regulation, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) each year submits to Congress an accounting statement and associated report providing...
The Advisory Committee on Transparency (a project of the Sunlight Foundation that advises the Congressional Transparency Caucus) will hold a panel discussion on August 20th on the role of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In particular, panelists (including me) are
asked to...
Regulatory policy should protect public health, safety and welfare while also not impeding innovation and competition in the private sector. The Obama Administration took a noteworthy step in this direction on Thursday, May 26, 2011, when it released the preliminary findings of a government-wide...
Prepared Statement of Susan E. Dudley, The George Washington Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on Accounting for the True Cost of Regulation: Exploring the Possibility of a Regulatory Budget before the United States Senate Committee on the Budget and Committee on Homeland Security and...
Federal agencies are increasingly turning to the Internet when conducting rulemaking. Regulations.gov, which originated as a central forum for agencies to post regulatory dockets and receive public comments, has offered expanding capabilities over its 10-year history. Nevertheless, according to a...
In January, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a proposed rule, Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption, establishing minimum standards for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of produce. Our examination of the...
The Obama Administration published a notice in the Federal Register today seeking comment on its approach to estimating the social cost of carbon (SCC) for use in regulatory impact analysis. The premise of the SCC, and public policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, is that the...
Ed Clarke, who passed away last week, was the first EPA Desk Officer in OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs when it was created in 1981.
From the beginning, the EPA desk was OIRA’s liveliest, always contending with the most controversial regulatory decisions. But Ed was a wise...
The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center improves regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. As part of its mission, the Center conducts careful and independent analyses to assess rulemaking proposals from the perspective of the public interest. This comment on...
Should government regulators think through the likely effects of proposed regulations to see whether they’ll do more good than harm? Every president for over 30 years has thought so, and required executive branch agencies to analyze regulatory impacts before imposing new
requirements, and to...
This article examines efforts by the three branches of federal government to oversee regulatory policy and procedures. It begins with a review of efforts over the last century to establish appropriate checks and balances on regulations issued by the executive branch, and then evaluates current...
As part of a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center produced a five-chapter report on regulatory differences between the United States (U.S.) and the European Union (EU) and their effects on...
This comment on the Department of Education’s (ED) proposed rule to amend the regulations
governing the Direct Loan Program does not represent the views of any particular affected party
or special interest, but is designed to evaluate the effect of ED’s proposal on overall consumer
welfare. As...
This comment on the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule establishing renewable
fuel standards for 2017 and 2018 does not represent the views of any particular affected party or
special interest, but is designed to evaluate the effect of EPA’s proposal on overall consumer
welfare...
The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center improves regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. As part of its mission, the Center conducts careful and independent analyses to assess rulemaking from the perspective of the public interest. This comment on the...
Over the last thirty years, most legislative and executive branch efforts at regulatory reform havefocused on analyzing and improving new regulations, and agencies seldom look back to evaluate whether existing regulations are having their intended effects. Section 610 of the Regulatory...
Executive Order 12866 outlines some fundamental tenets of U.S. regulatory policy, instructing regulatory agencies to identify the problems that they are attempting to solve through new rules and to promulgate rules that are cost-effective. These instructions are intended to make sure that
rules...
Prepared Statement of Richard J. Pierce, Jr., The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center Hearing, on an Introduction to a Regulatory Budget before the House Committee on the Budget July 7, 2016.
Small businesses are key to getting our economy back on track, but they bear the brunt of the increasing cost of regulation. Legislators seem to recognize as much and have introduced several bills requiring a better understanding of the effects of regulation on small businesses. Just last week...
On June 26, 2013, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee held a hearing on “Reducing Unnecessary and Costly Red Tape through Smarter Regulations.” The bipartisan Committee is evenly divided among members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, with an equal number of...
The FCC has proposed detailed rules governing privacy practices of broadband Internet access service (“BIAS”) providers. The rule would establish new, and different, privacy standards, beyond those that apply to other Internet companies (“edge” providers such as Facebook or ESPN that offer...
As more and more items of personal information become potentially available to internet providers, the government, and employers, a lively debate has emerged about the role of public policy in ensuring a proper balance between the various parties who may benefit from greater access to...
Prepared Statement of Sofie E. Miller & Jacob Yarborough, The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, Hearing on Safety Standard Addressing Blade-Contact Injuries on Table Saws Before the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission on August 9, 2017.
This comment in response to President Obama’s Executive Order 13725 provides recommendations to the National Economic Council on how agencies can reduce regulatory barriers to competition and improve outcomes for American consumers. Since the formation of the U.S. federal regulatory system,...
President-elect Trump committed to “a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations need to be eliminated” or what could be called a “two-for-one” requirement. The implementation of such a regulatory “pay as you go” process raises a number of issues including: what...
Subsidies are a commonplace feature of government programs, and can be found in regulatory programs as well as in budget expenditures and in the tax code. An accurate accounting of regulatory subsidies, accessible to the general public, could improve government regulation by helping to ensure...
There has been much heated debate in Washington lately over the effect that regulations have on the US economy. A recent Gallup survey found that “Small-business owners in the United States are most likely to say complying with government regulations (22%) is the most important problem facing...
What is the nature of congressional oversight of executive branch decision making? Do members of Congress oversee the work of federal agencies on a routine, ongoing basis? Or, alternatively, is congressional attention to the bureaucracy driven by disasters and other highprofile events? Arriving...
What can the American public expect from federal regulators in the coming year? The biannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, published last week, provides a first glimpse at upcoming regulations and, in a perfect world, offers citizens the chance to become involved in the...
The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center has identified retrospective review of regulations, particularly those aimed at reducing health, safety, and environmental risk, as a key research priority. As President Obama observed, “during challenging economic times …it is...
Executive branch agencies are required by Executive Order and statute to measure the impact of regulations, using both ex ante and ex post analyses. Agencies conduct analyses that seek to quantify regulations’ costs and benefits, economic impact, and distributional effects, along with whether the...
This week, the Administrative Conference of the United States will hold its second plenary session since it reconvened in March 2010. It will be the 54th plenary session of the Conference, an independent federal agency first established by Congress in 1968. Its membership includes both ―federal...
Greater accountability at regulatory agencies is desirable because (1) the public has a right to know how government affects society and (2) greater accountability improves agency performance. As described in the previous Insight in this series, the United States attempted eight major...
Each year we examine the Budget of the United States Government to identify the resources and
personnel devoted to developing and enforcing federal regulations that affect private behavior. This year’s report, Growth in Regulators’ Budget Slowed by Fiscal Stalemate, presents annual budget...