Publication Date
2015
Journal
Temple Law Review
Abstract
Cost-benefit analysis does not age well. As scientific understanding of health, safety, and environmental risks accumulates over time — and as the technology to mitigate those risks becomes more affordable — the assumptions underlying a rule’s cost-benefit analysis obsolesce. Yet because of agency inaction, rulemaking ossification, and inattention to priority setting, outdated rules persist. In order to combat obsolescence, agencies should use cost-benefit analysis as a commitment device. When an agency analyzes a rule, it should precommit to subsequently adopting a more stringent rule than the one it initially promulgates, if and when a private actor credibly demonstrates that the stricter rule has become cost-benefit justified. Using cost-benefit analysis as a commitment device would (1) more accurately calibrate rules over time, (2) induce innovation in risk-mitigating technologies by signaling to investors that future regulation would create demand, (3) improve the adversarial dynamic of the rulemaking process by encouraging innovator firms to defect from entrenched anti-regulatory coalitions, and (4) reorient the way administrations and agencies set regulatory priorities. Cost-benefit analysis has been used to constrain regulation, but it can — and should — be used to compel regulation and expedite the regulatory state’s reduction of risks over time.
Volume
87
First Page
447
Publisher
Beasley School of Law
Keywords
agencies, administrative law, regulations, rulemaking
Disciplines
Law
Recommended Citation
Matthew Wansley,
Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Commitment Device,
87
Temp. L. Rev.
447
(2015).
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/faculty-articles/452
