This chapter examines the origins and development of independent regulatory agencies in the United States, discusses the agencies and commissions typically considered “independent,” and considers foundational topics for the scholarship on regulation more broadly, including regulatory capture...

Scholars of regulation generally view the procedures that agencies must follow when promulgating rules as instruments by which political principals control bureaucratic agents. Much like political principals attempt to use procedural checks to constrain regulatory agencies’ actions, these same...

The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 continued a trend toward lengthier and more complex acts of Congress. We use novel metrics of the size, scope, and complexity of acts of Congress to assess Dodd-Frank's place in this trend. Our analysis is...

This comment makes recommendations for how the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) could improve its data collection methods, how to use those data to enhance retrospective review of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations, and how to align its procedural provisions for...

The George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center improves regulatory policy through research, education, and outreach. As part of its mission, the Center conducts careful and independent analyses to assess rulemaking proposals from the perspective of the public interest. This comment...

Performance standards are typically viewed as a preferable regulatory approach to design standards. Presidential administrations and offices have consistently instructed regulatory agencies to favor performance standards when feasible. Nevertheless, research shows that in many instances,...

Consistent with a long line of previous administrations, the White House's Office of Management and Budget published in June an organizational reform plan, offering more than 80 recommendations that detail government-wide and agency-specific organization changes to restructure, consolidate, and...

Existing research on the economic impacts of regulation largely focuses on federal or cross-country regulatory restrictions, but the problem of regulatory accumulation is expected to also occur at the state level. Public choice economics and market process theory offer insight into why...