An Equity Blindspot
The Incidence of Regulatory Costs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13037301 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Caroline Cecot (0000-0003-0053-9105, George Mason University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-43 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2152-2812 • E-ISSN: 2194-5888 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/bca.2023.3 |
| OpenAlex | W4362470521 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 8 |
The Biden administration has made equity a priority when issuing regulations, encouraging agencies to ensure that their regulations appropriately benefit and do not inappropriately burden disadvantaged groups. But scholarly examinations of agencies’ practices to date on understanding the distributional consequences of their regulations and on promoting equity have revealed significant gaps. In particular, agencies pay very little attention to the incidence of the costs of their regulations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, rarely considers the incidence of regulatory costs among disadvantaged groups, despite being an agency that conducts relatively complete benefit–cost analyses and explicitly analyzes environmental justice implications of its regulations. But this cost-blindness is a mistake; it presents a missed opportunity to use the current equity-focused momentum to make real improvements for disadvantaged groups that could have long-lasting effects. This essay calls for agencies to give more attention to the incidence of regulatory costs in order to identify needs and opportunities for grants and investments to disadvantaged groups. This approach could provide much-needed direction for a program like the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative
Agency (philosophy · Business · Disadvantaged · Economic growth · Economics · Equity (law · Mistake · Political science · Public economics · Sociology · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Law · Regulation and Compliance Studies · Finance
Counting regulations and measuring regulatory impact
When Patients are Assailants
Why Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Social Welfare Function Is Not Society’s Social Welfare Function
Valuing statistical absences? Why benefit-cost analysis cannot avoid population ethics
Distribution and Disputation
Advice on Guidance
Letter from Former SBCA Presidents and JBCA Editors to Oira Administrator
| Citations per year | 2.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |