Evaluating the Quality and Use of Regulatory Impact Analysis: The Mercatus Center's Regulatory Report Card, 2008-2013

Ellig, Jerry

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2821088

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Overall, these findings show that most educational BCAs performed by the federal government are incomplete. These findings are similar to reviews of economic evaluations in other sectors (e.g., from Hahn & Tetlock, 2008; Ellig, 2016; and Shapiro & Morrall, 2016). However, we emphasize two points.…”

Section: Evaluating Educational Bcas: Summary Findingssupporting

confidence: 86%

Evaluating Regulatory Impact Assessments in Education Policy

Belfield

Bowden

Rodríguez

2018

American Journal of Evaluation

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Benefit–cost analysis is an important part of regulatory decision-making, yet there are questions as to how often and how well it is performed. Here we examine 28 Regulatory Impact Assessments performed by the federal government on education regulations since 2006. We find many Regulatory Impact Assessments estimated costs, albeit using informal methods, but most failed to adequately report benefits. Also, most studies did not estimate net present value or clearly report methodological assumptions. In reviewing the relatively high quality studies we identified a number of discrepancies from best practice. Most importantly, few Regulatory Impact Assessments attempted a social benefit–cost analysis: Most examined “administrative burdens” from compliance with legislation. This alternative focus on administrative burdens has significant implications for economic evaluation in practice.

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Section: Evaluating Educational Bcas: Summary Findingssupporting

confidence: 86%

Evaluating Regulatory Impact Assessments in Education Policy

Belfield

Bowden

Rodríguez

2018

American Journal of Evaluation

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“…Despite these executive orders and related guidance documents, agencies rarely engage in distributional analysis, especially quantitative distributional analysis of impacts on demographic groups. Earlier work by Ellig (2016) and Robinson et al (2016) evaluated the extent of distributional analysis during the Obama administration, concluding that distributional analysis has not been done very frequently. In more recent work, Cecot and Hahn (2022) examined a data set of quantitative regulatory impact analyses across several presidential administrations and found that agencies rarely engage in quantitative distributional analysis.…”

Section: Unfulfilled Promisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Equity Blindspot: The Incidence of Regulatory Costs

Cecot

2023

J. Benefit Cost Anal.

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The Biden administration has made equity a priority when issuing regulations, encouraging agencies to ensure that their regulations appropriately benefit and do not inappropriately burden disadvantaged groups. But scholarly examinations of agencies’ practices to date on understanding the distributional consequences of their regulations and on promoting equity have revealed significant gaps. In particular, agencies pay very little attention to the incidence of the costs of their regulations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, rarely considers the incidence of regulatory costs among disadvantaged groups, despite being an agency that conducts relatively complete benefit–cost analyses and explicitly analyzes environmental justice implications of its regulations. But this cost-blindness is a mistake; it presents a missed opportunity to use the current equity-focused momentum to make real improvements for disadvantaged groups that could have long-lasting effects. This essay calls for agencies to give more attention to the incidence of regulatory costs in order to identify needs and opportunities for grants and investments to disadvantaged groups. This approach could provide much-needed direction for a program like the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative.

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“…We bolster CEA's sample by using other studies that include a larger flow of regulations to get a comprehensive view of the regulatory state. These additional studies include Jerry Ellig's "regulatory report cards" and analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Clyde Wayne Crews (Crews, 2015;Ellig, 2016). We also use the Federal regulatory budget itself, which is a fiscal-year sample of rules (dating back to 2017) from executive agencies that include rule-specific cost estimates.…”

Section: A Sample Selected Based On Public Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, before even considering benefits and costs, an RIA should assess whether a Jerry Ellig, the lead scholar on this project, reports that 48 % of these regulations were accompanied by "no significant evidence demonstrating the existence, size, or cause of the problem to be solved." Just 22 % of the regulations were accompanied by "reasonably thorough evidence showing that a given regulation would likely achieve the desired outcome(s)" (Ellig, 2016).…”

Section: Market Failures and Regulatory Alternatives Are Not Citedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Misconceptions about Federal Regulation

McLaughlin

Mulligan

2022

J. Benefit Cost Anal.

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Three common misconceptions persist about federal regulations. The first misconception is that most new regulations concern the environment, but in fact, only a small minority of regulatory flows are environmental. The second misconception is that regulators offer reasonable justifications and quantitative evidence for the majority of regulations. However, quantitative estimates rarely appear in published rules, negating the impression given by executive orders and Office of Management and Budget guidance, which require cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and clearly articulate sound economic principles for conducting CBA. Environmental rules have relatively higher-quality CBAs, at least by the standards of other federal rules. The third misconception, which is particularly relevant to the historic regulations promulgated during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that regulatory costs are primarily clerical, rather than opportunity or resource costs.

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Evaluating the Quality and Use of Regulatory Impact Analysis: The Mercatus Center's Regulatory Report Card, 2008-2013

Cited by 11 publications

References 52 publications

Evaluating Regulatory Impact Assessments in Education Policy

Evaluating Regulatory Impact Assessments in Education Policy

An Equity Blindspot: The Incidence of Regulatory Costs

Three Misconceptions about Federal Regulation

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