Accountability | Reseach

Impartiality, Political Participation, and Federal Budget Process Reform

Timothy P. Roth, Adam C. Smith | Dec 20, 2012
The collapse of the federal budget process and the decline in trust in government threaten the stability of the self-governing republic that we inherited from our nation’s founders. Informed by their moral and political philosophy, we suggest an approach to reforming the budget process aimed at reclaiming that institutional trust. We argue that budget process reform must be animated by two related ideas: First, that post-constitutional statutory law must be impartial, and second, that both citizens and their elected representatives have a right to participate in, and to influence, the political process.

Institutions and State Spending: An Overview

Published in
The Independent Review
Matthew Mitchell, Nick Tuszynski | Jun 01, 2012
Matt Mitchell and Nick Tuszynski discuss two institutions that have been successful at controlling spending: separate taxing and spending committees, and item-reduction vetoes.

Does OIRA Review Improve the Quality of Regulatory Impact Analysis?

Evidence from the Final Year of the Bush II Administration
Published in
Administrative Law Review
Jerry Ellig, Patrick McLaughlin | Dec 01, 2011
Using data from the Mercatus Center’s Regulatory Report Card project and statistics on Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) review time from reginfo.gov, we examine whether the quality and use of regulatory analysis vary consistently with OIRA actions.

Positively Valued Fiat Money after the Sovereign Disappears: The Case of Somalia

Lawrence H. White | Apr 02, 2011
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The Consequences of Midnight Regulations and Other Surges in Regulatory Activity

Published in
Public Choice
Patrick McLaughlin | Mar 10, 2011
Is the midnight regulations phenomenon real and what are its consequences? This paper finds that when an administration’s time is almost up, submissions of economically significant regulations nearly double. Such surges in regulatory activity decrease the duration of regulatory review at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), likely because of political pressure to quickly approve new rules. Specifically, one additional economically significant regulation submitted to OIRA decreases the mean review time for all regulations by about two thirds of a day. If OIRA review improves regulation quality, then regulatory surges that decrease review time could hinder such improvement.

Regulators and Redskins

Published in
Public Choice
Patrick McLaughlin, Robert D. Tollison | Feb 25, 2011
We examine the correlation between federal government activity and performance of the capital’s National Football League team, the Washington Redskins. We find a positive, non-spurious, and robust correlation between the Redskins’ winning percentage and bureaucratic output, measured by pages published in the Federal Register. Because the Redskins’ performance is prototypically exogenous, we give this result a causal interpretation and provide a plausible, causal mechanism: bureaucrats must make “logrolling” deals to expand their regulatory power, and a winning football team offers a shared source of optimism to lubricate such negotiations. We do not find the same correlation when examining congressional activity.

Running for Cover

The BRAC Commission as a Model for Federal Spending Reform
Published in
The Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy
Jerry Brito | Jan 2011
In this journal article, Jerry Brito first looks at the roots of success for Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) commissions. He then compares them to recent commission proposals to limit federal spending.

Assessing the Quality of Regulatory Analysis

A New Evaluation and Data Set for Policy Research
Jerry Ellig, John Morrall | Dec 15, 2010
This paper assesses the quality and use of regulatory analysis accompanying every economically significant regulation proposed by executive-branch regulatory agencies in 2008 and 2009.

Does Haste Make Waste in Regulatory Analysis?

Patrick McLaughlin, Jerry Ellig | Nov 08, 2010
Most federal agencies must conduct economic analysis when proposing major regulations. This paper uses a new dataset scoring the quality of analysis that accompanied proposed regulations in 2008.

Spending Beyond Our Means

Bruce Yandle | Jul 30, 2010
The federal government’s deficit will reach $1.4 trillion this year—a whopping 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—and the total federal debt stands at almost $14 trillion. That’s $40,000 for…