In The Rhetoric of Reaction, published in 1991, Albert Hirschman identified three standard objections to reform proposals: perversity, futility, and jeopardy. In Hirschman’s account, these objections define reactionary rhetoric. As Hirschman had it, a proposal would be “perverse” if it...

There can be a serious tension between the commitment to cost-benefit analysis and a realistic appreciation of the limits of official knowledge. Without significant efforts to reduce those limits, that analysis might be inadequately informed. Whenever regulators face significant informational...

Behaviorally informed interventions include nudges, taxes, subsidies, bans, and mandates. In evaluating such interventions, policymakers should consider both their welfare effects (including, for example, their potentially negative effects on subjective well-being) and their effects on...

In the United States, are administrative agencies illegitimate? A threat to democracy? A threat to liberty? A threat to human welfare? Many people think so, and in important ways, they are surely correct. But an understanding of the actual operation of the administrative state in the United...

Over the course of the last half-century, the “injury in fact” test has been radically transformed. It began as a bold and essentially lawless effort, led by Justice William O. Douglas, to expand the category of persons entitled to bring suit, and in the process to open federal courts to a...

As a rule, regulation is not acquired by “the industry,” and it is not designed and operated primarily for its benefit. The mechanisms behind the promulgation of regulations are multiple, and almost all of the time, it greatly matters whether regulators believe that regulations will, all...

In its current form, antitrust law is often said to advance consumer welfare and to disregard economic inequality. But with the right priority-setting and other modest reforms, efforts to increase consumer welfare might simultaneously reduce economic inequality. Because monopoly and monopsony...

Why did the Beatles become a worldwide sensation? Why do some cultural products succeed and others fail? Why are some musicians, poets, and novels,, unsuccessful or unknown in their lifetimes, iconic figures decades or generation after their deaths? Why are success and failure so unpredictable?...

With respect to climate change, the principal focus of both research and public policy has been on mitigation – on reducing greenhouse gas emissions so as to reduce anticipated adverse effects. But it is increasingly clear that adaptation must also be a high priority. Climate-related risks –...

Evolutionary explanations for behavioral findings are often both fascinating and plausible. But even so, they do not establish that people are acting rationally, that they are not making mistakes, or that their decisions are promoting their welfare. For example, present bias, optimistic...