In the News
– Cost-Benefit Analysis
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Tuesday
January 17th,
2012A Year of Rethinking Regulations
Imagine you’re the CEO of a major national corporation with two million employees and 312 million customers. Now imagine having no consistent plan to revisit past decisions to determine what worked and what didn’t.
That’s how our government behaved until a year ago when President Obama put new rules in place to require review of past regulations — a process with the potential to make the government smarter. Businesses should be pleased since, in practice, this process has mostly meant the snipping away of red tape.
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Wednesday
October 26th,
2011Reality ruins another GOP talking point
Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, told Bloomberg the regulatory issue is “getting picked up and talked about, but not for any good reason.”
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Tuesday
October 25th,
2011Obama Wrote 5% Fewer Rules Than Bush While Costing Business
“This is getting picked up and talked about, but not for any good reason,” Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said in an interview. “There’s nothing new about this attack: It comes and goes in good times and in bad.”
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Monday
July 11th,
2011The President’s Executive Order on Improving and Streamlining Regulation
President Obama’s new Executive Order has the potential to trim unnecessary rules while boosting needed protections. Adequate protection for the environment, public health, and consumers is essential, but periodic review can help ensure they stay up to date.
Independent agencies are charged with regulating some of the most important issues facing the country like Internet policy and consumer safety. Today’s move will help improve those regulatory programs by setting up a process of periodic review, while respecting the discretion of these agencies.
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Wednesday
February 23rd,
2011Who Benefits from Regulation?
Regulation has become a hot topic in recent weeks. There have been executive orders to reform them, hearings to scrutinize them and budgets to defund them. But in all these forums, one side of the balance sheet is often absent — the fact that regulations create significant economic benefits.
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Tuesday
January 25th,
2011Obama’s regulatory reform will focus on fairness
The Obama order, as has been noted, is one in a long line of executive orders requiring review of agency action using cost-benefit analysis. Initiated under Reagan, the process initially looked only at economic efficiency, remaining insensitive to how benefits and burdens were distributed. So if a regulation generated a large economic benefit for very wealthy people, but caused lower income earners to suffer disproportionately, it could be approved. At the same time, a rule that would help lift people out of poverty, but placed a larger burden on corporate profits, could be turned down.
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Friday
January 21st,
2011Obama’s executive order could actually be a win for the environment
Some progressive voices have weighed in on the executive order President Obama signed on Tuesday with harsh criticism. The president’s move, which lays out new ground rules for regulations issued by government agencies, was lambasted as a betrayal of progressive values and a gift to industry. But a closer look reveals that much of the focus has been on the rhetoric surrounding the order’s release, and not on the actual substance. There, you won’t find much for progressives to complain about. In practice, the new order makes several significant changes to the current regulatory process that will favor stronger protections for public health, safety, and the environment.
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Thursday
January 20th,
2011Obama’s Executive Order: Olive Branch to Whom?
Tuesday’s news of a new executive order on regulatory review was not welcomed by some progressives. President Obama announced his move in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and it was widely perceived as an olive branch to regulated businesses. But in its substance, the order mostly boosts the case for a strong government hand in protecting the public from the negative consequences of the free market.
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Wednesday
January 19th,
2011Move Reflects Shift In President’s Tone
The Clinton order lasted six years into George W. Bush’s presidency. But a lot depends on how the White House uses its power. In the Bush years, says Michael Livermore of New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity, “the actual practice changed significantly” and “informal reviews” essentially derailed rules secretly. In 2007, Mr. Bush replaced the Clinton order with his own, among other things, strengthening the role of political appointees.
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Tuesday
January 18th,
2011Obama’s Regulatory Review Gets Mixed Response
Michael Livermore, the Institute for Policy Integrity’s executive director, claims that the cost-benefit analysis enshrined in Obama’s executive order rewards regulations that benefit society, dismissing conservative arguments that most regulations are burdensome to businesses. “For rules they’ve adopted in which you get more benefit at less cost, the net benefit to society is worth billions and billions.”
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