The Role of Cost-Benefit Analysis in the U.S. Regulatory System

Speaker:
Howard Shelanski (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, The White House)

Commentators:

• Michael Gibbons OBE (Chairman, Regulatory Policy Committee, UK)
• Adam Jasser (President, Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, Poland; previously Secretary of State in the Chancellery of Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland responsible for better regulation)
• Professor Claudio Radaelli (Anniversary Chair in Politics, Director of the Centre for European Governance, Jean Monnet Chair in Political Economy, University of Exeter)

Chair:
Professor Ioannis Lianos (Chair in Global Competition Law and Public Policy; Director, UCL Centre for Law, Economics & Society)

Organised by the UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society

About the event

This presentation will examine how regulatory impact analyses (RIAs), and cost-benefit analysis in particular, factors into the development and review of federal regulations in the United States. It will discuss the circumstances under which agencies must prepare RIAs and how the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) uses RIAs in its assessment of significant federal rules. The presentation will then discuss the quantification of costs and benefits, and both the limits and appropriate uses of such quantification in regulatory policy. The presentation will conclude by discussing several challenges confronting the assessment of regulatory impacts and suggest avenues for future policy development.

The commentator discussion that follows Professor Shelanski’s talk will provide a comparison with the relevant practice in the UK, the European Union and other Member States.The recent focus on regulatory cooperation and convergence in the context of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), in particular the Section on regulatory cooperation include provisions on impact assessments for planned regulatory acts, suggesting impacts to examine (for instance, impact on international trade or investment) and proposing procedural or transparency obligations. Hence, understanding the role of cost benefit analysis in the US policy-making, as well as of course the role of the tool of impact assessments in policy decision-making in the EU and EU Member States is essential in order for the transatlantic regulatory cooperation to work.