Economists at the Federal Communications Commission study economists!
Editor’s Note: The FCC Working Paper, “The Organization of Economists in Regulatory Agencies: Does Structure Matter?” by Jerry Ellig and Catherine Konieczny is available here.
From: AEI
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How does the paper reach that conclusion?
The FCC economists examined the quality of RIA across federal agencies. Quality was measured in two ways. One approach was to have multiple economists assess the thoroughness of RIA studies. The other approach was to adopt the quality measure developed by an academic study.
The researchers then analyzed the correlation between these quality measures and several factors that might affect quality. These factors included things such as whether the agency organized economists into their own functional organization; the number of economists relative to the number of regulations; who was president (the Clinton, Obama, and George W. Bush administrations were considered); and the work of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House office that reviews executive branch regulations. In effect, the OIRA reviews RIAs.
