Benefit-Cost Analysis in Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulation: A Statement of Principles

Benefit-cost analysis can play a very important role in legislative and regulatory policy debates on improving the environment, health, and safety. It can help illustrate the tradeoffs that are inherent in public policymaking as well as make those tradeoffs more transparent. It can also help agencies set regulatory priorities. Benefit-cost analysis should be used to help decisionmakers reach a decision. Contrary to the views of some, benefit-cost analysis is neither necessary nor sufficient for designing sensible public policy. If properly done, it can be very helpful to agencies in the decisionmaking process. Decisionmakers should not be precluded from considering the economic benefits and costs of different policies in the development of regulations. Laws that prohibit costs or other factors from being considered in administrative decisionmaking are inimical to good public policy. Currently, several of the most important regulatory statutes have been interpreted to imply such prohibitions. Benefit-cost analysis should be required for all major regulatory decisions, but agency heads should not be bound by a strict benefit-cost test. Instead, they should be required to consider available benefit-cost analyses and to justify the reasons for their decision in the event that the expected costs of a regulation far exceed the expected benefits. Agencies should be encouraged to use economic analysis to help set regulatory priorities. Economic analyses prepared in support of particularly important decisions should be subjected to peer review both inside and outside government. Benefits and costs of proposed major regulations should be quantified wherever possible. Best estimates should be presented along with a description of the uncertainties. Not all benefits or costs can be easily quantified, much less translated into dollar terms. Nevertheless, even qualitative descriptions of the pros and cons associated with a contemplated action can be helpful. Care should be taken to ensure that quantitative factors do not dominate important qualitative factors in decisionmaking. The Office of Management and Budget, or some other coordinating agency, should establish guidelines that agencies should follow in conducting benefit-cost analyses. Those guidelines should specify default values for the discount rate and certain types of benefits and costs, such as the value of a small reduction in mortality risk. In addition, agencies should present their results using a standard format, which summarizes the key results and highlights major uncertainties.

Is There a Role for Benefit-Cost Analysis in Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulation?

Benefit-cost analysis has a potentially important role to play in helping inform regulatory decision-making, although it should not be the sole basis for such decision-making. This paper offers eight principles on the appropriate use of benefit-cost analysis.Environment, Health and Safety, Regulatory Reform

Wy Production and Limits on Anomalous WWy Couplings in pp̅ Collisions √s = 1.96 TeV

We measure the cross section and the difference in rapidities between photons and charged leptons for inclusive W(→ lv) + y production in ey and µy final states. Using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.2 fb-1 collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, the measured cross section times branching fraction for the process pp̅ → Wy + X → lvy + X and the distribution of the charge-signed photon-lepton rapidity difference are found to be in agreement with the standard model. These results provide the most stringent limits on anomalous WW[1] couplings for data from hadron colliders: -0.4 \u3c ∆ky \u3c 0.4 and -0.08 \u3c λy \u3c 0.07 at the 95% C.L

Wy Production and Limits on Anomalous WWy Couplings in pp̅ Collisions √s = 1.96 TeV

We measure the cross section and the difference in rapidities between photons and charged leptons for inclusive W(→ lv) + y production in ey and µy final states. Using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.2 fb-1 collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, the measured cross section times branching fraction for the process pp̅ → Wy + X → lvy + X and the distribution of the charge-signed photon-lepton rapidity difference are found to be in agreement with the standard model. These results provide the most stringent limits on anomalous WW[1] couplings for data from hadron colliders: -0.4 \u3c ∆ky \u3c 0.4 and -0.08 \u3c λy \u3c 0.07 at the 95% C.L

Search for a Fermiophobic and Standard Model Higgs Boson in Diphoton Final States

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson and a fermiophobic Higgs boson in the diphoton final states based on 8.2 fb-1 of pp̅ collisions at √s= 1.96 TeV collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. No excess of data above background predictions is observed and upper limits at the 95% C.L. on the cross section multiplied by the branching fraction are set which are the most restrictive to date. A fermiophobic Higgs boson with a mass below 112.9 GeV is excluded at the 95% C.L

Measurement of the top quark mass using the matrix element technique in dilepton final states

We present a measurement of the top quark mass in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. The data were collected by the D0 experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.7 fb−1. The matrix element technique is applied to tt events in the final state containing leptons (electrons or muons) with high transverse momenta and at least two jets. The calibration of the jet energy scale determined in the lepton + jets final state of tt decays is applied to jet energies. This correction provides a substantial reduction in systematic uncertainties. We obtain a top quark mass of mt = 173.93 ± 1.84 GeV

Search for a Fourth Generation tl Quark in pp̅ Collisions at √s= 1.96 TeV

We present a search for pair production of a fourth generation tl quark and its antiparticle, followed by their decays to a W boson and a jet, based on an integrated luminosity of 5.3 fb-1 of proton-antiproton collisions at √s= 1.96 TeV collected by the D0 Collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We set upper limits on the tlt-l production cross section that exclude at the 95% C.L. a tl quark that decays exclusively to W + jet with a mass below 285 GeV. We observe a small excess in the µ + jets channel which reduces the mass range excluded compared to the expected limit of 320 GeV in the absence of a signal

[?] lifetime measurement in the \u3ci\u3eCP\u3c/i\u3e-odd decay channel [?] → J/ψ f\u3ci\u3e0\u3c/i\u3e(980)

The lifetime of the [?] meson is measured in the decay channel [?] → J/ψπ+π− with 880 ≤ Mπ+π- - ≤ 1080 MeV / c2, which is mainly a CP-odd state and dominated by the f0 (980) resonance. In 10.4 fb-1 of data collected with the D0 detector in Run II of the Tevatron, the lifetime of the [?] meson is measured to be [?] = 1.70 ± 0.14(stat) ± 0.05(syst) ps. Neglecting CP violation in [?]/[?] mixing, the measurement can be translated into the width of the heavy mass eigenstate of the [?], ΓH = 0.59 ± 0.05(stat) ± 0.02(syst) ps-1

Measurement of the inclusive \u3ci\u3ett\u3c/i\u3e production cross section in \u3ci\u3epp\u3c/i\u3e collisions at [?] = 1.96 TeV and determination of the top quark pole mass

The inclusive cross section of top quark-antiquark pairs produced in pp collisions at [?] = 1.96 TeV is measured in the lepton + jets and dilepton decay channels. The data sample corresponds to 9.7 fb−1 of integrated luminosity recorded with the D0 detector during Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Employing multivariate analysis techniques we measure the cross section in the two decay channels and we perform a combined cross section measurement. For a top quark mass of 172.5 GeV, we measure a combined inclusive top quark-antiquark pair production cross section of σtt = 7.26 ± 0.13(stat)[?] (syst) pb which is consistent with standard model predictions. We also perform a likelihood fit to the measured and predicted top quark mass dependence of the inclusive cross section, which yields a measurement of the pole mass of the top quark. The extracted value is mt = 172.8 ± 1.1(theo)[?] (exp) GeV

Evidence for Simultaneous Production of \u3ci\u3eJ/ψ\u3c/i\u3e and ϒ Mesons

We report evidence for the simultaneous production of J/ψ and ϒ mesons in 8.1 fb−1 of data collected at [?] = 1.96 TeV by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab pp Tevatron Collider. Events with these characteristics are expected to be produced predominantly by gluon-gluon interactions. In this analysis, we extract the effective cross section characterizing the initial parton spatial distribution, σeff = 2.2 ± 0.7(stat) ± 0.9(syst) mb