1. The Unbearable Lightness of Regulatory Costs
- Author:
- Frank Ackerman
- Publication Date:
- 02-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- Will unbearable regulatory costs ruin the US economy? This specter haunts official Washington, just as fears of communism once did. Once again, the prevailing rhetoric suggests, an implacable enemy of free enterprise puts our prosperity at risk. Like anti-communism in its heyday, anti-command-and-control-ism serves to narrow debate, promoting the unregulated laissez-faire economy as the sole acceptable goal and standard for public policy. Fears of the purported costs of regulation have been used to justify a sweeping reorganization of regulatory practice, in which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is empowered to, and often enough does, reject regulations from other agencies on the basis of intricate, conjectural, economic calculations.
- Topic:
- Energy Policy, Environment, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America