Many people have wondered why the US government conducts cost-benefit analysis with close reference to the value of a statistical life (VSL). It is helpful to answer that question by reference to the “Easy Cases,” in which those who benefit from regulatory protection must pay for it. In such...

Many regulators have concluded that cost-benefit analysis is the best available method for capturing the welfare effects of regulations. It is therefore understandable that in recent years, some people have been interested in requiring financial regulators to engage in careful cost-benefit...

In diverse areas – from retirement savings, to fuel economy, to prescription drugs, to consumer credit, to food and beverage consumption – government makes personal decisions for us or helps us make what it sees as better decisions. In other words, government serves as our agent. Understood...

The paper introduces the concepts of incentive relation and implementation relation, discussing them in the context of agent-principal relationships. The incentives literature relevant to implementation is reviewed, as well as relevant literature on individual behavior in organizations and on...

Markets are imperfect, and the suboptimal results are frequently used to justify government regulation. Government regulation, however, is also imperfect, and the suboptimal results are, less-frequently, used to justify deregulatory efforts. Located between those poles is industry...

To a very large extent, politics is agency. Indeed, agent-principal relationships pervade public and public-private behavior. This paper reviews the extensive but not yet integrated literature applying agency concepts to political settings. This includes agency in definitions of politics or...

Independent regulatory agencies face increasing pressure to conduct high-quality economicanalysis of regulations, similar to the regulatory impact analysis conducted by executive branchagencies. Such analysis could be required by evolving judicial doctrines, regulatory reformstatutes, or...

George Stigler’s “The Theory of Economic Regulation” (1971) is a landmark in the economics of regulation. It used simple public choice reasoning to set out the “capture theory” of regulation whereby “… as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated...

This article analyzes how law enforcers (with particular emphasis on securities regulators) should allocate their limited resources among multiple targets, as well as how they are likely to allocate these resources. It modifies existing models in one significant way: it considers the effect of...

This article concerns the history of automation in U.S. tax administration and the challenges automation presents to administering the laws consistent with democratic values. The most under-theorized aspect of tax administration is the expansion of automation and its impact on the current tax...