The Costs And Benefits Of Regulation

For years, businesses have complained about the costs of regulatory compliance. On the other hand, society is becoming increasingly aware of the environmental, safety, health, financial, and other risks of business activity. Government oversight seems to be one of the answers to safeguard against these risks. But how can we deregulate and regulate without jeopardizing our public goals or acting as a brake on economic growth? Many instruments are available to assess the effects of laws regulating business, including the regulatory impact assessment (RIA), which contains cost/benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, risk analysis, and cost assessments. This book argues that public goals will be achieved more effectively if compliance costs of the enterprises are as low as possible. Highlighting examples from a wide spectrum of industries and countries, the authors propose a new kind of RIA, the business impact assessment (BIA), designed to improve both business and public policy decision making.

This book discusses the current topic of Federal Government regulations increasingly assessed by asking whether the benefits of the regulation justifies the cost of the regulation.

øThe authors present an extensive survey of the empirical evidence on the determinants of environmental performance as well as the effects of environmental regulation on the costs of production, plant location, firm-level productivity, stock prices and

June 1997 This paper examines the economic impact of regulation in industrial and developing countries. It argues that economic analysis can play an important role in restructuring regulated industries and developing more effective regulations, and in reducing politically driven regulation and capture. The past two decades have seen an unparalleled rise in new health, safety, and environmental regulations in industrial countries. At the same time, in some countries there has been substantial economic deregulation of several industries (including airlines, railroads, trucking, energy, telecommunications, and financialmarkets). Developing countries are engaged in deregulating some sectors of the economy and devising new regulatory frameworks for others. After reviewing the literature, Guasch and Hahn provide an overview of the costs and benefits of regulation throughout the world, highlight the potential gains from reform of regulation and deregulation in both industrial and developing countries, draw lessons from experience with government regulation, and suggest how to improve regulation in developing countries. They find that it is possible to explore systematically the costs and benefits of regulatory activities using standard economic analysis. They conclude that regulation - especially regulation aimed at controlling prices and entry into markets that would otherwise be workably competitive - can limit growth and significantly reduce economic welfare. Although unnecessary process regulation can hurt the economy, social regulations may significantly benefit the average consumer. But some regulations do not meet goals effectively and may sometimes reduce living standards. Developing countries can consider several regulatory policies, tools, and frameworks to improve their approach to regulation. What they choose will depend on available administrative expertise and resources, as well as political constraints and economic impacts. Generally, local and national capabilities for evaluating regulation need to be improved. Regulation is not generally undesirable, but it often has undesirable economic consequences, which result in part from political forces to redistribute wealth. These forces need can be mitigated by more sharply evaluating the consequences and tradeoffs of proposed regulations. This paper - a joint product of the Office of the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics and the Advisory Group, Latin America and the Caribbean Technical Department - was produced as a background paper for World Development Report 1997 on the role of the state in a changing world.

This paper examines the e ...

As millions of Americans struggle to find work in the wake of the Great Recession, politicians from both parties look to regulation in search of an economic cure. Some claim that burdensome regulations undermine private sector competitiveness and job growth, while others argue that tough new regulations actually create jobs at the same time that they provide other benefits. Does Regulation Kill Jobs? reveals the complex reality of regulation that supports neither partisan view. Leading legal scholars, economists, political scientists, and policy analysts show that individual regulations can at times induce employment shifts across firms, sectors, and regions—but regulation overall is neither a prime job killer nor a key job creator. The challenge for policymakers is to look carefully at individual regulatory proposals to discern any job shifting they may cause and then to make regulatory decisions sensitive to anticipated employment effects. Drawing on their analyses, contributors recommend methods for obtaining better estimates of job impacts when evaluating regulatory costs and benefits. They also assess possible ways of reforming regulatory institutions and processes to take better account of employment effects in policy decision-making. Does Regulation Kills Jobs? tackles what has become a heated partisan issue with exactly the kind of careful analysis policymakers need in order to make better policy decisions, providing insights that will benefit both politicians and citizens who seek economic growth as well as the protection of public health and safety, financial security, environmental sustainability, and other civic goals. Contributors: Matthew D. Adler, Joseph E. Aldy, Christopher Carrigan, Cary Coglianese, E. Donald Elliott, Rolf Färe, Ann Ferris, Adam M. Finkel, Wayne B. Gray, Shawna Grosskopf, Michael A. Livermore, Brian F. Mannix, Jonathan S. Masur, Al McGartland, Richard Morgenstern, Carl A. Pasurka, Jr., William A. Pizer, Eric A. Posner, Lisa A. Robinson, Jason A. Schwartz, Ronald J. Shadbegian, Stuart Shapiro.