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The article considers the use of information markets as means to improve public decision making. Many legal scholars have studied how to improve public decision making. Cost-benefit analysis is a tool used by decision makers to help inform the policy process. It argues that decision makers can be more confident in analytical results if these results are based more directly on market data.

Discusses the use of information markets to substantially improve on the basic model for economic development. Significance of good economic policy to the delivery of foreign aids; Factors needed to allocate resources to their most highly-valued uses; Concept behind information markets.

This paper reviews the US and European experiences with regulatory oversight and the use of formal tools to analyze regulation. We conclude that the US and Europe have made some progress in improving regulatory analysis and oversight, but they can do much more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several legal scholars are highly skeptical of the use of cost-benefit analysis and other economic tools in regulatory decision making. Recently, these critics have focused on debunking economic summaries of regulatory activity. This article addresses the analytical concerns raised by the critics. Over the past several decades, there have been numerous critiques of the application of economic approaches to problems in public policy. There have also been a number of defenses of quantitative approaches to analyzing important public policy issues.

Examines the statistics released by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in its 2003 report on the costs and benefits of regulation. Data on the regulations that pass as benefit-cost test; Reasonableness of the OMB data; Improvement of regulations and regulations analyses; Plausibility of the OMB statistics.

Addresses the influence of economics on environmental and resource policy-making in the U.S. during the 1990s. Trends and changes in the impacts of economic concepts such as efficiency, cost effectiveness and distributional equity; Role of efficiency as a criterion for assessing environmental and natural resource rules and regulations; Overview of the public policy affecting natural resource management during the administration of President Bill Clinton.

Focuses on the role of U.S. states and the federal government in antitrust regulation. Problems with federalism in antitrust enforcement; Case study of federalism in antitrust enforcement; Examination of whether a global authority is needed to promote consumer welfare.

Evaluates reports issued by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the costs and benefits of federal regulation. Determination of how well the reports have met with congressional objectives; Recommendation of ways that the government can produce better information on the benefits and costs of regulation; Problems with the way the government performs cost-benefit analyses.

Explores the disconnect between law and policy analysis by examining the policy response to the use of cellular phones while driving in the U.S. Growth of the cellular phone industry; Difference between hands-free and hand-held cellular phone; Reason why a ban on hand-held cellular phones is not likely to be effective; Argument that the laws and proposed legislation have not generally been supported by policy analysis.

Comments on the bankruptcy of Enron Corp. Discussion on the policy of information disclosure and the principle of conflict of interest; Accounting firm that audit Enron Corp.; Discussion on the nature of the problem that lead to the fall of Enron Corp.; Involvment of economist Paul Krugman to the scandal.

Focuses on the implementation of an executive order analyzing the benefits and costs of significant regulatory actions in Pennsylvania. Quantification of the cost for low benefits; Role of the federal agencies in assessing the regulations for cost-benefit analysis; Improvement of health benefits.

Presents the benefits and costs of online privacy legislation in the U.S. Emphasis of the scope and scope of privacy protection; Probability of information privacy problems; Use of personal information.

Provides a comprehensive assessment of state efforts to eliminate or change burdensome regulations and to use economic analysis to produce more sensible results. Overview of federal and state regulatory reform in the United States; State and federal-level reform efforts; Criteria agencies must use to review existing regulations.

Presents information on a study which analyzed the economic impacts of federal regulation in the United States. Failure of the federal agencies to comply with the Office of Management and Budget guidelines; Evaluation of major environmental, health and safety regulations; Estimation of costs and benefits; Alternatives to maximize net benefits; Results and discussion; Conclusion.

Focuses on the use of the Federal Register, a central storage for information on regulation, to improve regulatory accountability in the United States. Provision of accessible information to the public; Variation of information presented in regulatory analysis; Impact of changes in information presentation on the content.

Explores the benefits and costs of regulation using standard economic analysis. Adverse impact of regulation on economic growth; Five general approaches to estimating the cost of regulation; Costs of federal regulation in the United States; Benefits of deregulation in industrial and developing countries; Regulatory reform in Mexico.

Comments on the impact of the proposals of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security on airline safety and security through an economic analysis. Criticism on lack of data on cost and benefits implications; Cost effectiveness of security measures proposed by the Commission; Delay costs.

Provides a comprehensive review of United States government regulatory activity and demonstrates how the regulatory environment can dramatically affect the performance of particular industries and the overall economy. Examples of innovative regulatory reforms; Recent efforts by the Executive Branch to impose greater discipline and coherence on the structure of federal regulation.

Indicates how science and social science can be combined to assess the range and effectiveness of policy alternatives available to environmental decision-makers. Cost-effective regulatory alternatives to the Los Angeles, California particulate sulfate problem; Application of both sciences to the relationship of emissions to pollution levels and environmental quality; Rejection of notion that a simple reduction in emissions leads to a commensurate reduction in pollution levels; Problem of applying licenses and emissions.

Presents two approaches, pollution charges and marketable trading permits, which deserve active consideration in view of Congress' reauthorization of the Clean Water Act. Directions for reform; Cost-benefit analysis; Economic incentives; Better water management.

The appeal of using markets as a means of allocating scarce resources stems in large part from the assumption that a market will approximate the competitive ideal. When competition is not a foregone conclusion, the question naturally arises as to how a firm might manipulate the market to its own advantage. This paper analyzes the issue of market power in the context of markets for transferable property rights. First, a model is developed that explains how a single firm with market power might exercise its influence. This is followed by an examination of the model in the context of a particular policy problem--the control of particulate sulfates in the Los Angeles region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author says that for decades, economists have been extolling virtues of market-based or economic-incentive approaches to environmental protection. Both environmental taxes and marketable permits are coming of age in the policy arena. Examples include the introduction of marketable permits in the United States to control acid rain, the use of charges in Europe to limit air and water pollution, and the employment of deposit-refund schemes for products ranging from beverage containers to batteries. Although some policymakers would likely claim that the singular objective of environmental regulation is to protect environmental quality, the decision problem actually faced by policymakers is far more complex, involving trade-offs among multiple objectives. Comparisons between conventional command-and-control regulation, including technology standards and performance standards, and market-based approaches, including taxes and markets in pollution rights, have repeatedly noted that conventional regulations fail to achieve environmental objectives in the least costly manner.

Suggests ways in which policy design can be enhanced in the design of environmental policies. Traditional approach to comparing environmental markets and standards; Assessment of the impact various uncertainties on policy outcomes; Realistic assessment of political constraints; Instrument choice comparisons.

This paper examines the problem of identifying cost-effective solutions to problems with multiple objectives. The traditional approach has been to minimize costs subject to feasibility constraints and a set of targets. In contrast, a multiobjective programming approach treats the objectives as choice variables and cost as a parameter. To illustrate the two approaches, we analyze the problem of achieving environmental objectives. The comparison reveals that the traditional cost-minimizing approach can generate solutions that are inefficient, in the sense that greater emission reductions could have been attained at the same cost. Because the solution sets to the two problems may differ, we derive conditions under which the two approaches yield a similar set of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAM) contain several new provisions governing emissions from motor vehicles. These provisions of the 1990 CAAA will have a dramatic impact on the type of cars people drive over the coming decades. Given the high cost of achieving further reductions from automobiles, there has been increasing interest in exploring alternative fuels that improve environmental quality. One important contribution of this study is to highlight the importance of considering transition issues in assessing the cost of alternative fuels. A second contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how the cost-effectiveness of methanol and M85 depends on how a methanoI-based strategy is implemented. The analysis of the costs and effectiveness of methanol and gasoline leads to the following conclusions: (1) transition issues are critical in evaluating the cost and cost-effectiveness of methanol- based fuels; (2) M85 and M100 are likely to be expensive relative to conventional gasoline, particularly in the near term and short term; (3) cost-effectiveness varies dramatically by region, with Los Angeles and New York substantially better than Houston; and (4) widespread introduction of methanol is riot likely to be a cost-effective approach for improving urban air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and experimentally tests an institution that is specifically designed to promote efficiency without sacrificing equity. The principal result of the analysis is that the institution developed here performs well in the sense that efficiency is increased for a wide range of different initial distributions of wealth. The framework developed in this paper is relevant to policy makers who are interested in implementing more efficient institutions, but who are constrained by the political environment in which they operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both politicians and regulatory agencies are frequently forced to make tradeoffs among competing objectives. When these tradeoffs are highly sensitive, as in the case of jobs and environmental quality, they are rarely made explicitly. This paper takes on the task of uncovering the nature tradeoffs among jobs, economic growth and environmental quality. A case study of Wisconsin's innovative attempt for dealing with its air pollution problems provides important insights into why particular policy instruments are selected in balancing economic and environmental objectives. In line with observations of previous authors, the analysis reveals that there is a marked tendency for the political process to resist market mechanisms for rationing scarce environmental resources. In addition to providing a rationale and evaluation of the specific policy being developed by Wisconsin, the paper develops two testable hypotheses regarding the general selection of instruments for making tradeoffs among jobs and environmental quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEP A) forced the Atomic Energy Commission, and subsequently the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to weigh costs and benefits of proposed nuclear power plants. This paper examines how the Commission has developed a framework for decision making in response to the NEPA mandate. Its principal conclusions are that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not interested in being in the business of assessing power needs, and that regulating need by electricity source is counterproductive. If the question of power needs should be addressed at all, the paper argues that a more general framework should be used which would apply to all new facilities. Such a framework would allow a utility to build the plant of its choice, subject to satisfaction of existing regulations, after it is determined that sufficient demand exists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that environmental economics can benefit from a careful examination of the results of innovative approaches to environmental management. The particular set of policies examined involves two tools which have received widespread support from the economics community: marketable permits and emission charges. Both tools represent ways to induce business to search for lower cost methods of achieving environmental standards. They stand in stark contrast to predominant command-and-control approach in which a regulator specifies the technology a firm must use to comply with regulations. Under highly restrictive conditions, it can be shown that both of the economic approaches share the desirable feature that any gains in environmental quality will be obtained at the lowest possible cost. Until the 1960s, these tools only existed on blackboards and in academic journals, as products of the fertile imaginations of academics. However, some countries have recently begun to explore using these tools as part of a broader strategy for managing environmental problems. This paper chronicles the experience with both marketable permits and emissions charges. It also provides a selective analysis of a variety of applications in Europe and the U.S. and shows how the actual use of these tools tends to depart from the role which economists have conceived for them.

The purpose of this paper is to formally examine the effect of placing constraints, such as the line-item veto or a balanced budget amendment, on legislative behavior. There are two basic findings that emerge from the analysis. First, constraints on one type of instrument, such as spending, will in general result in more widespread use of other kinds of instruments, such as regulation. Second, it is naive to conclude that constraints on legislative behavior will promote economic efficiency and/or reduce the growth of government. The primary contribution of the paper is to suggest how changes in the political environment can affect instrument choice, economic welfare, and the size of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the need for governments to consider the information on equity in addition to the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) practice in regulatory decision-making. Topics explored include the significant role of the scientific community in improving the use of the CBA method, the equity concerns acknowledged in the memo issued by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, and the quantitative analysis to be performed before finalizing a decision.

Controlling Chemicals. The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States Concern about environmental quality has resulted in increased regulation throughout industrialized nations. While the aims of the regulatory [...]

Loading the Dice. A Five-Country Study of Vinyl Chloride Regulation Loading the Dice is a well-written, penetrating, and persuasive book. In focusing on the regulation of a single chemical the [...]