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The intensified controversy in recent years over the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the payment of prevailing wages on federally funded construction projects, has resulted in several new studies of the effects of that act. This invited paper reviews the evidence presented in these recent studies on several aspects of the act, including how Davis-Bacon wage determinations compare to local construction wages as measured by sources other than the act's administrators; the effects of lags in the act's data-gathering process; and the savings that would result from calculating the prevailing rate as the arithmetic mean of local wages instead of the current use of the modal rate in most cases. The authors conclude that although the cost studies to date have been faulty in several respects, it is reasonably clear that Davis-Bacon is unattractive on grounds of economic efficiency alone. The question remains, however, whether these efficiency costs are offset, partially or wholly, by the possible equity benefits of the act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a model of the conditions under which risk regulations that are too expensive have net adverse health effects. Two principal components of this relationship are the implicit value of life and the income elasticity of risky behaviors. Using new empirical estimates for the income elasticity of many of the most consequential risk-related behaviors, our results imply that a $15 million decrease in income is associated with the loss of an additional statistical life. Regulations that cost more than $15 million per expected life saved will have counterproductive effects on individual mortality., I. INTRODUCTION Economic studies of the value of life have focused primarily on individuals' risk-money tradeoffs for preventing death. Use of these willingness to pay measures in conjunction with benefit-cost [...]

This paper compares the quality and use of regulatory analysis accompanying economically significant regulations proposed by US executive branch agencies in 2008, 2009, and 2010. We find that the quality of regulatory analysis is generally low, but varies widely. Budget regulations, which define how the federal government will spend money or collect revenues, have much lower-quality analysis than other regulations. The Bush administration's 'midnight' regulations finalized between Election Day and Inauguration Day, along with other regulations left for the Obama administration to finalize, tended to have lower-quality analysis. Most differences between the Bush and Obama administrations depend on agencies' policy preferences. More conservative agencies tended to produce better analysis in the Obama administration, and more liberal agencies tended to do so in the Bush administration. This suggests that agencies more central to an administration's policy priorities do not have to produce as good an analysis to get their regulations promulgated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is now a permanent part of the regulatory process in the United States, and many other countries around the world as well as the European Union have adopted it or are moving toward it, there have been few empirical attempts to assess either whether its use improves regulations or how BCA interacts with the political environment. We use a unique US database of the costs and benefits of 109 economically significant regulations issued between 2000 and 2009 to examine whether the amount of information provided in the BCA or political factors surrounding the regulation better correlate with the net benefits of the regulation. We find that there is little correlation between the information provided by the analysis and the net benefits. However, we find that regulations that receive few public comments and are not issued at the end of an administration, have the highest net benefits. These are the regulations that are the least politically salient. This interaction between the political environment and the economic performance of a regulation has been under-examined and deserves further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a model of the conditions under which risk regulations that are too expensive have net adverse health effects. Two principal components of this relationship are the implicit value of life and the income elasticity of risky behaviors. Using new empirical estimates for the income elasticity of many of the most consequential risk-related behaviors, our results imply that a $15 million decrease in income is associated with the loss of an additional statistical life. Regulations that cost more than $15 million per expected life saved will have counterproductive effects on individual mortality. (JEL L51, I12, J17) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT A simple demand and supply model is proposed to "explain" the wide variations in state and local government expenditures on health and hospitals, and to assess the impact of Medicaid in satisfying the health needs of blacks. The model shows that a large percentage of the variation can be explained and that blacks tend to demand and evidently receive a higher proportion of public health care on the basis of their income than one would expect. The discriminatory effects of Medicare are more than offset by a combination of Medicaid and state and local spending on health care, although the continuing racial health gap indicates that state and local spending has not offset the wide differences between blacks and whites in private and Medicare spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]