Ms. Janna Rezaee has written a dissertation on OIRA which differs remarkably from many of the previous articles on the institution. More specifically a number of the studies to date emphasize OIRA’s role as policing the rulemaking process for ineffective rules. In this instance, however, the author focuses on OIRA’s role as supporting (“subsidizing”) the policies of the Presidency.
A major conclusion is:
“…when a given agency is ideologically closer to the president, it both (i) issues more policies and (ii) its policies are more likely to be reviewed by OIRA, than when it is more distant from the president; and (iii) when a given agency is ideologically more distant from the president, it withdraws more policies than when it is closer to the president. Together with the theory these findings suggest that the focus on viewing the president as a veto player in many existing studies overlooks the role of the president in subsidizing the work of agencies.”
Given the above it appears that the ROI on OIRA is sufficiently larger than other elements of OMB which would lead one to conclude that moving it several blocks from the NEOB flunks a benefit/cost analysis.
A draft of the dissertation is located at UCal Berkely Dissertation OIRA
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