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US regulatory agencies have been encouraged to consider the equity and distributional impacts of regulations for decades. This paper examines the extent to which such analysis is done and provides recommendations for improving it. We analyze 189 regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) that monetize at least some benefits and costs prepared by a variety of agencies from October 2003 to January 2021. We find that only two RIAs calculated the net benefits of a policy for a specific demographic group. Furthermore, only 21% of RIAs calculate some benefits by group (typically for demographic groups) and only 20% calculate some costs by group (typically for industry groups such as small entities). Overall, the differences between presidential administrations are relatively small compared to the differences between agencies in their performance using our measures of distributional analysis. We then evaluate a sample of 23 analyses related to environmental justice (EJ) prepared by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between January 2010 and January 2022. The EJ analyses frequently identify disproportionate exposures to pollutants for a variety of groups and discuss the effects of proposed regulations on these exposures, but they rarely consider the distribution of costs and less than half consider any alternatives. To date, virtually no agency prepares a distributional analysis that could help regulators evaluate whether a proposed regulation, on net, advantages or disadvantages a particular group and whether an alternative could generate a preferred distributional outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION Ethanol is a fuel that has been touted by politicians and technologists for a variety of reasons related to both energy security and the environment. It figures prominently in [...]

These concern who should be counted in a benefit-cost analysis; how different groups, such as high-income and low-income groups, should be weighed; and what discount rate should be used to compare future benefits and costs with current benefits and costs (1). Because nearly all regulations have upfront costs and deliver benefits over time, the upshot of this proposed change is to make regulation look more attractive in terms of a benefit-cost test. This suggests that the choice of using a global or domestic social cost of carbon in benefit-cost analyses for regulatory activities could make a big difference in selecting policies that maximize net benefits (5, 6). INSIGHTS In many jurisdictions around the world, a primary way that scientific and technical knowledge and expertise can influence society is through government regulation. [Extracted from the article]