Consumer\u27s Guide to Regulatory Impact Analysis: Ten Tips for Being an Informed Policymaker

Regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) weigh the benefits of regulations against the burdens they impose and are invaluable tools for informing decision makers.We offer 10 tips for nonspecialist policymakers and interested stakeholders who will be reading RIAs as consumers. Core problem: Determine whether the RIA identifies the core problem (compelling public need) the regulation is intended to address. Alternatives: Look for an objective, policy-neutral evaluation of the relative merits of reasonable alternatives. Baseline: Check whether the RIA presents a reasonable “counterfactual” against which benefits and costs are measured. Increments: Evaluate whether totals and averages obscure relevant distinctions and trade-offs. Uncertainty: Recognize that all estimates involve uncertainty, and ask what effect key assumptions, data, and models have on those estimates. Transparency: Look for transparency and objectivity of analytical inputs. Benefits: Examine how projected benefits relate to stated objectives. Costs: Understand what costs are included. Distribution: Consider how benefits and costs are distributed. Symmetrical treatment: Ensure that benefits and costs are presented symmetrically

Consumer\u27s Guide to Regulatory Impact Analysis: Ten Tips for Being an Informed Policymaker

Regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) weigh the benefits of regulations against the burdens they impose and are invaluable tools for informing decision makers.We offer 10 tips for nonspecialist policymakers and interested stakeholders who will be reading RIAs as consumers. Core problem: Determine whether the RIA identifies the core problem (compelling public need) the regulation is intended to address. Alternatives: Look for an objective, policy-neutral evaluation of the relative merits of reasonable alternatives. Baseline: Check whether the RIA presents a reasonable “counterfactual” against which benefits and costs are measured. Increments: Evaluate whether totals and averages obscure relevant distinctions and trade-offs. Uncertainty: Recognize that all estimates involve uncertainty, and ask what effect key assumptions, data, and models have on those estimates. Transparency: Look for transparency and objectivity of analytical inputs. Benefits: Examine how projected benefits relate to stated objectives. Costs: Understand what costs are included. Distribution: Consider how benefits and costs are distributed. Symmetrical treatment: Ensure that benefits and costs are presented symmetrically

Unacknowledged Health Benefits of Genetically Modified Food : Salmon and Heart Disease Deaths

The marketing of genetically modified (GM) salmon will lower salmon prices and increase consumption of salmon, an exceptionally good source of omega-3 fatty acids linked to lower risk of heart disease. We estimate that the resulting increase in omega-3 intake will prevent between 600 and 2,600 deaths per year in the United States.Includes bibliographical reference

Climate Damages, Globalism, and Federal Regulation

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed for public comment new higher estimates of damages from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The estimates, called the social cost of carbon (SCC), are the monetary value of the net harm to society of emitting a metric ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in a given year. Ranging from $120 to$340 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (C02) emitted for 2020, these estimates represent harm to everyone on earth from a metric ton of C02 emissions, and therein lies a key issue. Recent administrations have split on whether the U.S. government should assess damages from GHGs using effects on the entire globe or just on the United States. This question matters because the SCC plays a key role in implementing the Biden administration\u27s ambitious plans to address climate change. The EPA and other agencies use the SCC to estimate benefits of climate and energy regulations, such as limits to power plant emissions or standards for vehicle fuel efficiency. Higher benefits estimates generally justify more costly regulations. We believe that developing and reporting estimates of climate damages for both the United States and the entire globe would better inform the public than the global estimate alone, as the EPA has proposed. Both estimates should be used separately in calculations of benefits and costs of climate-related regulations and related policies. We agree with the EPA that the domestic SCC should not be the only measure of the SCC. As the EPA mentioned, an exclusive domestic focus would undermine U.S. policies that encourage global cooperation and would not capture the effects of climate change on supply chain disruptions that affect U.S. welfare or on U.S. business and military infrastructure abroad. Using the domestic SCC in addition to the global SCC would increase transparency about who receives the benefits, foster policy discussions about fairness and equity, furnish agencies with the flexibility to prepare analyses consistent with their statutory mandates, and provide important distributional information to help in international negotiations. The EPA\u27s proposal presents estimates for climate effects occurring physically within the United States for a limited set of damage categories but also claims these estimates cover only a subset of total damages, do not capture spillovers or indirect effects, and do not reflect benefits for U.S. citizens and residents. The EPA gives these shortcomings as major reasons for presenting only global damage estimates. We disagree. In fact, a rich set of economic and environmental data is available to support relatively complete estimates of damages to the United States. Presenting climate-control benefits to the United States is consistent with the Biden administration\u27s commitments to consider the equity effects of environmental policies. An exclusive focus on the global SCC is at odds with President Biden\u27s memorandum calling for more distributional analysis regarding dis- advantaged, vulnerable or marginalized communities in the United States. The development of a domestic SCC estimate is a prerequisite for a distributional analysis of the effects on such communities. The EPA\u27s proposal asserts that the U.S. use of a global estimate of damages will encourage other nations to reduce future emissions. But this seems like wishful thinking. Most countries are already failing to meet their pledged non-binding commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is longstanding practice in U.S. regulatory analysis to incorporate only those changes in behavior required by current law or binding agreements, not goals or pledges. In addition, focusing strictly on global SCC presumes that U.S. policy- makers are indifferent about whether climate-control benefits occur in the United States or elsewhere in the world. Such indifference would be surprising news to members of Congress and to U.S. taxpayers and voters, who have a right to know the benefits of GHG emissions cuts to the United States and the rest of the world. The choice to develop domestic as well as global SCC estimates affects incentives to both the EPA and the outside academy to improve such estimates. The EPA has chosen to develop a global SCC estimate, a summary measure of a dauntingly complex reality. The agency\u27s failure to provide a domestic SCC estimate might effectively chill efforts to improve the technical quality of such estimates. The EPA should consider and report estimates of the benefits to the United States from GHG emissions reductions. Focusing solely on global benefits of such reductions without considering the corresponding benefits to the United States provides inadequate transparency to Americans who will bear the costs of emissions restrictions adopted by U.S. regulators