Regulatory Process & OIRA

Research

A Process for Cleaning Up Federal Regulations Joshua C. Hall, Michael Williams \| Dec 20, 2012 This paper suggests a process to identify, evaluate, and eliminate inefficient regulations. Combining lessons from two successful government reform programs—the Base Realignment and Closure Act in the United States and the Dutch Administrative Burden Reduction Programme—the proposed framework would identify the regulatory costs associated with a historical piece of legislation and create a target for reduction in regulatory costs.	Regulatory Benefits: Examining Agency Justification For New Regulations Sherzod Abdukadirov \| Dec 18, 2012 This study attempts to shed some light on whether the benefits claimed by the federal agencies are likely to be achieved. In contrast to other validation studies, the study focuses on the agencies’ benefit claims rather than the actually measured benefits. Since agencies justify their regulatory decisions based on expected benefits, examining the quality of these claims is important.
The Alternative of Private Regulation: The London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market as a Model Edward Stringham, Ivan Chen \| Oct 18, 2012 A system of private regulation gives more firms access to capital markets and more choices to investors, and it can be viewed as a model for other markets to follow.	RegData: The Industry-Specific Regulatory Constraint Database (IRCD) Omar Ahmad Al-Ubaydli, Patrick McLaughlin \| Oct 15, 2012 The Industry-specific Regulatory Constraint Database (IRCD) is a new database that quantifies federal regulation. IRCD offers a novel and objective measure of the accumulation of regulations in the economy overall and for all the different industries in the U.S. IRCD uses text analysis to count the number of binding constraints in the text of federal regulations, which are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). In addition, it measures the degree to which different groups of regulations target specific industries.
Risk Assessment, Safety Assessment, and the Estimation of Regulatory Benefits Richard Belzer \| Oct 10, 2012 Most federal agencies are required to conduct benefit-cost analyses for their largest regulations. Benefit-cost analysis is intended to objectively inform decision makers about the myriad effects of a range of potential alternatives. For many regulations, benefit-cost analyses depend on health risk assessment. It is well established that a clear conceptual distinction must be established and maintained between (positive) risk assessment and (normative) risk management. Decision makers cannot ensure that regulatory choices conform with their intentions if they cannot discern where the science in an analysis ends and value judgments begin.	Inflated Benefits in Agencies' Economic Analysis Sherzod Abdukadirov, Deema Yazigi \| Aug 21, 2012 Regulatory impact analyses can serve as an important tool. They are designed to help policymakers consider a proposed regulation’s potential impact on the economy as a whole, not simply the interests of those lobbying for that regu- lation. When federal agencies conduct such analyses, how- ever, they often fail to comply with requirements enunciated in executive orders from presidents of both political parties over the past few decades. As a result, agency estimates of benefits are often fragmentary and unreliable, leading to ineffective regulation and wasting of public resources.

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Testimony & Comments

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards Jerry Ellig \| Feb 27, 2013 Even if NHTSA does not develop a more cost-effective alternative, Congress and the public deserve an accurate assessment of the likely benefits and costs of the proposed rule. An accurate assessment of benefits would(1) acknowledge that benefits to blind and vision-impaired individuals are just a fraction of the figure in the preliminary RIA, (2) recognize that there are no benefits to pedalcyclists at the speeds covered by the regulation, and (3) base any benefit estimates for people with normal vision on research that identifies the causes of hybrid vehicle collisions with such individuals.	Perspectives on Retrospective Review and Analysis Randall Lutter \| Jul 12, 2012 More generally, greater data collection, access, and analysis can foster improved understanding of regulations and contribute to reducing regulatory burdens and improving their effectiveness.
The Impacts of Overdraft Programs on Consumers Todd Zywicki, Asa Skinner \| Jun 28, 2012 Profits gained from overdraft protection have been used by banks to expand services and accessibility for customers both rich and poor, and limiting overdraft protection may threaten many of the benefits that it makes possible.	Comment on OMB's Draft 2012 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations Richard Williams \| Jun 11, 2012 The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested comment on the 2012 Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local and Tribal Entities (hereafter referred to as “the OMB report”). This comment has been produced by Richard A. Williams, Ph.D., of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, an education, research, and outreach organization that works with scholars, policy experts, and government officials to bridge academic theory and real-world practice.
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: Federal Regulations and Regulatory Reform under the Obama Administration Richard Williams \| Mar 21, 2012 Richard Williams testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law on how effective regulatory reform has been under the Obama Administration.	Improving Pre-Proposal Regulatory Analysis Jerry Ellig \| Mar 29, 2011 Jerry Ellig testified before the House Judiciary Committee on improving pre-proposal regulatory analysis.

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Research Summaries & Toolkits

The Regressive Effects of Regulation: Who Bears the Cost? Diana Thomas \| Feb 22, 2013 In a market economy, regulations are often thought of as a useful tool in correcting the imbalance of power between large, entrenched interests and consumers. Federal agencies are supposed to create universal rules of the road that protect the health, safety, and welfare of customers and employees, secondary considerations for companies focused on profits. Recent Mercatus Center research casts doubt on whether the regulatory process actually achieves these goals.	A Process for Cleaning Up Federal Regulations Joshua C. Hall, Michael Williams \| Feb 05, 2013 The concern that American businesses are overly burdened by regulations has legitimate grounds. In 2011, American companies had to comply with over 1 million federal regulatory restrictions, compared with about 860,000 a decade earlier.[1] However, to truly address concerns about overregulation, policy makers cannot focus exclusively on the growth of new regulations. Attention must also be paid to the lack of an efficient and effective regulatory review process for preexisting rules.
Letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Regarding the Underperformance of Regulatory Analysis Richard Williams \| Jun 11, 2012 For the past 15 years, the Office of Management and Budget has provided Congress with reports on the combined annual benefits and costs of federal agency regulatory programs. All have reported benefits exceeding costs, although it is impossible to tell whether that is actually true. OMB’s comparisons are inaccurate, for three reasons.	How Well Do Federal Regulations Actually Work? The Role of Retrospective Review Randall Lutter \| May 11, 2012 With the volume of federal regulations exceeding some 165,000 pages, a reliable practice of review is critical to judge how well or poorly existing regulations actually work and to revise regulations accordingly. Yet despite decades of executive orders aimed at improving retrospective analysis and review, agencies consistently fail to produce useful measures of regulations’ performance.
‘Ready, Fire, Aim!’: A Foundational Problem with Regulations \| Nov 30, 2011 This research summary discusses how the regulatory process often yields excessively broad and burdensome rules that fail to achieve the desired public objective.	Regulatory Oversight Richard Williams, Jerry Ellig \| Sep 12, 2011 Congressional oversight committees can use regulatory impact analysis (RIAs) as a starting point for investigating whether a regulation achieved its intended outcomes and at what cost.

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Speeches & Presentations

Smart Regulation and Competition Policy in Electric and Telecommunications Markets Jerry Ellig \| Jan 14, 2010 Jerry Ellig participated in panel discussion before Texas policy makers in Austin, Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Policy Orientation on the future of the Texas Public Utility…	The Future of Federal Regulation Jerry Ellig \| Nov 05, 2009 Jerry Ellig was invited to give a lecture at Pepperdine University about the future of regulations in the federal government.
Regulation and High Reliability Organizations Jerry Ellig \| May 28, 2009 Jerry Ellig presents before the Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety and Security in the Visiting Speakers Program about regulation in high reliability organizations, such as…	Economics as a Guide to Telecom Reform Jerry Ellig \| Jan 22, 2009 Jerry Ellig presents at a Heartland Institute conference about Ohio telecommunications policy. Dr. Ellig discusses the role of consumer welfare in telecom policy.
Are We Safe Yet? Jerry Ellig, Jamie Belcore \| Jul 14, 2008 Jerry Ellig and Jamie Belcore present the process of regulatory analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.	Toward a More Perfect Union Jerry Ellig, Jerry Brito \| Apr 2008 At the 2008 Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, Jerry Ellig and Jerry Brito present their journal article, "Toward a More Perfect Union: Regulatory Analysis and Performance…

Mercatus Regulatory Studies

Charts

Comparison of Final Rules with Monetized Benefits and Costs

It is a commonplace to hear presidents and OMB officials claim that the total benefits of regulations exceed their total costs. In this week’s chart, Mercatus Center policy director Richard Williams highlights the disparity between the total number of rules and the number of rules with monetized benefits and costs in order to demonstrate that such claims simply cannot be validated.

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Experts

James Broughel

James Broughel is a program manager of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center. Mr. Broughel is a doctorate student in the economics program at George Mason University. He earned his MA in economics from Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Jerry Ellig

Jerry Ellig is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His primary research interests include the federal regulatory process, economic regulation, and telecommunications regulation.

John Morrall

John Morrall is an affiliated senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His primary research interests are regulatory impact analysis, benefit-cost analysis, and regulatory reform and oversight.

Adam Thierer

Adam Thierer is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University with the Technology Policy Program. His primary research interests are technology, media, Internet, and free speech policy issues, with a particular focus on online child safety and digital privacy policy issues.

Richard Williams

Richard Williams is the director of policy research at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His primary research interests are risk analysis, benefit-cost analysis, regulation, food safety and nutrition, and excise taxes.

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Videos

Ask Veronique Anything: Why Are You Against Tighter Regulations?

Veronique de Rugy | July 03, 2012

Who Regulates the Regulators?

Todd Zywicki | April 03, 2012

Podcasts

Hester Peirce Discusses Regulatory Oversight Essentials at Regulation University

Hester Peirce | February 21, 2013

Hester Peirce discusses how regulations bring laws to life at this Regulation University event.

Download the MP3

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Recent Events

Looking Back to See Forward: The Need For Regulatory Retrospective Review

Please join the Mercatus Center's Regulation University for a seminar on what retrospective review of regulations means in practice today and what it can mean in the future.

More Recent Events

Books

Regulation: A Primer

Susan Dudley, Jerry Brito | Aug 14, 2012

Federal regulations affect nearly every area of our lives and interest in them is increasing. However, many people have no idea how regulations are developed or how they impact our lives. Regulation: A Primer by Susan Dudley and Jerry Brito provides an accessible overview of regulatory theory, analysis, and practice.

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A Process for Cleaning Up Federal Regulations Joshua C. Hall, Michael Williams \| Dec 20, 2012 This paper suggests a process to identify, evaluate, and eliminate inefficient regulations. Combining lessons from two successful government reform programs—the Base Realignment and Closure Act in the United States and the Dutch Administrative Burden Reduction Programme—the proposed framework would identify the regulatory costs associated with a historical piece of legislation and create a target for reduction in regulatory costs.	Regulatory Benefits: Examining Agency Justification For New Regulations Sherzod Abdukadirov \| Dec 18, 2012 This study attempts to shed some light on whether the benefits claimed by the federal agencies are likely to be achieved. In contrast to other validation studies, the study focuses on the agencies’ benefit claims rather than the actually measured benefits. Since agencies justify their regulatory decisions based on expected benefits, examining the quality of these claims is important.
The Alternative of Private Regulation: The London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market as a Model Edward Stringham, Ivan Chen \| Oct 18, 2012 A system of private regulation gives more firms access to capital markets and more choices to investors, and it can be viewed as a model for other markets to follow.	RegData: The Industry-Specific Regulatory Constraint Database (IRCD) Omar Ahmad Al-Ubaydli, Patrick McLaughlin \| Oct 15, 2012 The Industry-specific Regulatory Constraint Database (IRCD) is a new database that quantifies federal regulation. IRCD offers a novel and objective measure of the accumulation of regulations in the economy overall and for all the different industries in the U.S. IRCD uses text analysis to count the number of binding constraints in the text of federal regulations, which are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). In addition, it measures the degree to which different groups of regulations target specific industries.
Risk Assessment, Safety Assessment, and the Estimation of Regulatory Benefits Richard Belzer \| Oct 10, 2012 Most federal agencies are required to conduct benefit-cost analyses for their largest regulations. Benefit-cost analysis is intended to objectively inform decision makers about the myriad effects of a range of potential alternatives. For many regulations, benefit-cost analyses depend on health risk assessment. It is well established that a clear conceptual distinction must be established and maintained between (positive) risk assessment and (normative) risk management. Decision makers cannot ensure that regulatory choices conform with their intentions if they cannot discern where the science in an analysis ends and value judgments begin.	Inflated Benefits in Agencies' Economic Analysis Sherzod Abdukadirov, Deema Yazigi \| Aug 21, 2012 Regulatory impact analyses can serve as an important tool. They are designed to help policymakers consider a proposed regulation’s potential impact on the economy as a whole, not simply the interests of those lobbying for that regu- lation. When federal agencies conduct such analyses, how- ever, they often fail to comply with requirements enunciated in executive orders from presidents of both political parties over the past few decades. As a result, agency estimates of benefits are often fragmentary and unreliable, leading to ineffective regulation and wasting of public resources.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards Jerry Ellig \| Feb 27, 2013 Even if NHTSA does not develop a more cost-effective alternative, Congress and the public deserve an accurate assessment of the likely benefits and costs of the proposed rule. An accurate assessment of benefits would(1) acknowledge that benefits to blind and vision-impaired individuals are just a fraction of the figure in the preliminary RIA, (2) recognize that there are no benefits to pedalcyclists at the speeds covered by the regulation, and (3) base any benefit estimates for people with normal vision on research that identifies the causes of hybrid vehicle collisions with such individuals.	Perspectives on Retrospective Review and Analysis Randall Lutter \| Jul 12, 2012 More generally, greater data collection, access, and analysis can foster improved understanding of regulations and contribute to reducing regulatory burdens and improving their effectiveness.
The Impacts of Overdraft Programs on Consumers Todd Zywicki, Asa Skinner \| Jun 28, 2012 Profits gained from overdraft protection have been used by banks to expand services and accessibility for customers both rich and poor, and limiting overdraft protection may threaten many of the benefits that it makes possible.	Comment on OMB's Draft 2012 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations Richard Williams \| Jun 11, 2012 The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has requested comment on the 2012 Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local and Tribal Entities (hereafter referred to as “the OMB report”). This comment has been produced by Richard A. Williams, Ph.D., of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, an education, research, and outreach organization that works with scholars, policy experts, and government officials to bridge academic theory and real-world practice.
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs: Federal Regulations and Regulatory Reform under the Obama Administration Richard Williams \| Mar 21, 2012 Richard Williams testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law on how effective regulatory reform has been under the Obama Administration.	Improving Pre-Proposal Regulatory Analysis Jerry Ellig \| Mar 29, 2011 Jerry Ellig testified before the House Judiciary Committee on improving pre-proposal regulatory analysis.

The Regressive Effects of Regulation: Who Bears the Cost? Diana Thomas \| Feb 22, 2013 In a market economy, regulations are often thought of as a useful tool in correcting the imbalance of power between large, entrenched interests and consumers. Federal agencies are supposed to create universal rules of the road that protect the health, safety, and welfare of customers and employees, secondary considerations for companies focused on profits. Recent Mercatus Center research casts doubt on whether the regulatory process actually achieves these goals.	A Process for Cleaning Up Federal Regulations Joshua C. Hall, Michael Williams \| Feb 05, 2013 The concern that American businesses are overly burdened by regulations has legitimate grounds. In 2011, American companies had to comply with over 1 million federal regulatory restrictions, compared with about 860,000 a decade earlier.[1] However, to truly address concerns about overregulation, policy makers cannot focus exclusively on the growth of new regulations. Attention must also be paid to the lack of an efficient and effective regulatory review process for preexisting rules.
Letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Regarding the Underperformance of Regulatory Analysis Richard Williams \| Jun 11, 2012 For the past 15 years, the Office of Management and Budget has provided Congress with reports on the combined annual benefits and costs of federal agency regulatory programs. All have reported benefits exceeding costs, although it is impossible to tell whether that is actually true. OMB’s comparisons are inaccurate, for three reasons.	How Well Do Federal Regulations Actually Work? The Role of Retrospective Review Randall Lutter \| May 11, 2012 With the volume of federal regulations exceeding some 165,000 pages, a reliable practice of review is critical to judge how well or poorly existing regulations actually work and to revise regulations accordingly. Yet despite decades of executive orders aimed at improving retrospective analysis and review, agencies consistently fail to produce useful measures of regulations’ performance.
‘Ready, Fire, Aim!’: A Foundational Problem with Regulations \| Nov 30, 2011 This research summary discusses how the regulatory process often yields excessively broad and burdensome rules that fail to achieve the desired public objective.	Regulatory Oversight Richard Williams, Jerry Ellig \| Sep 12, 2011 Congressional oversight committees can use regulatory impact analysis (RIAs) as a starting point for investigating whether a regulation achieved its intended outcomes and at what cost.

Smart Regulation and Competition Policy in Electric and Telecommunications Markets Jerry Ellig \| Jan 14, 2010 Jerry Ellig participated in panel discussion before Texas policy makers in Austin, Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Policy Orientation on the future of the Texas Public Utility…	The Future of Federal Regulation Jerry Ellig \| Nov 05, 2009 Jerry Ellig was invited to give a lecture at Pepperdine University about the future of regulations in the federal government.
Regulation and High Reliability Organizations Jerry Ellig \| May 28, 2009 Jerry Ellig presents before the Department of Energy, Office of Health, Safety and Security in the Visiting Speakers Program about regulation in high reliability organizations, such as…	Economics as a Guide to Telecom Reform Jerry Ellig \| Jan 22, 2009 Jerry Ellig presents at a Heartland Institute conference about Ohio telecommunications policy. Dr. Ellig discusses the role of consumer welfare in telecom policy.
Are We Safe Yet? Jerry Ellig, Jamie Belcore \| Jul 14, 2008 Jerry Ellig and Jamie Belcore present the process of regulatory analysis at the Department of Homeland Security.	Toward a More Perfect Union Jerry Ellig, Jerry Brito \| Apr 2008 At the 2008 Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, Jerry Ellig and Jerry Brito present their journal article, "Toward a More Perfect Union: Regulatory Analysis and Performance…

Regulatory Process & OIRA