Download or read book Benefit cost Analysis in U S Environmental Regulatory Decisions written by Kenneth William Easter and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: As the number and cost of environmental regulations have increased over the last thirty years, the regulated community, taxpayers, and policy makers have begun to demand that the benefits of regulations justify their costs. The use of benefit-cost analysis as an integral part of developing new regulations is increasing and the demands and expectations being placed on the method have expanded. Although benefit-cost analysis is expected to play an even greater role in environmental decision making in the years ahead, questions remain concerning whether benefit-cost analysis can meet these expectations. This paper explores the role of benefit-cost analysis in US public investment and environmental decision making and examines how benefit-cost methods are responding to new analytic demands. It reviews the US experience with benefit-cost analysis at the Federal and State levels of government and discusses several applications to environmental regulations, illustrating how such analysis can contribute to decision-making as well as pointing out some of the method's pitfalls. The paper also discusses how several important (and sometimes controversial) methodological issues-including intergenerational equity, the distribution of benefits and costs, uncertainty and risk, and the measurement of the value of non-market goods and services-might be addressed practically as benefit-cost analysis is further extended into environmental policy and regulation. Finally, the paper concludes with recommendations for the future use of benefit-cost analysis in environmental decision making.
Download or read book Environmental Policy Under Reagan s Executive Order written by V. Kerry Smith and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, a formal benefit-cost requirement plays an integral role in U.S. environmental policymaking, and in this volume, some of the nation's leading experts on environmental policy appraise the effects of President Reagan's Executive Order No. 12291. By considering how the Environmental Protection Agency has responded to 12291, these essays identify the limitations of conventional practices of benefit-cost analysis. Originally published in 1984. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Download or read book Benefit cost Analysis in Environmental Health and Safety Regulation written by Kenneth Joseph Arrow and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This primer highlights both the strengths and the limitations of benefit-cost analysis in the development, design, and implementation of regulatory reform.
Download or read book The Cost benefit State written by Cass R. Sunstein and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2002 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the current topic of Federal Government regulations increasingly assessed by asking whether the benefits of the regulation justifies the cost of the regulation.
Download or read book Cost benefit Analysis Can be Useful in Assessing Environmental Regulations Despite Limitations written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Valuing Health Risks Costs and Benefits for Environmental Decision Making written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1990-02-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Government Operations written by U S Government Accountability Office (G and published by BiblioGov. This book was released on 2013-06 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: GAO reported on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) major efforts to prepare cost-benefit analyses to support regulatory decisions, as required under Executive Order 12291. In addition, it discussed the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) review of those analyses and identified many problems that affect the potential usefulness of cost-benefit analyses for assessing environmental regulations. GAO found large gaps in the underlying scientific information which EPA uses to estimate the environmental benefits of its regulatory alternatives. EPA has also had difficulty determining how much people are willing to pay for health and environmental improvements. However, a cost-benefit analysis can still provide useful information to regulatory decisionmakers if EPA presents a range of dollar values which reflect the uncertainty of the estimates. Some environmental laws place more emphasis on the level of cleanup to be achieved than on the costs involved, and they may prohibit or limit the use of cost-benefit analyses in setting standards and regulations. In addition, cost-benefit analyses are not transmitted to Congress. Executive Order 12291 generally requires EPA and other federal agencies to provide a detailed cost-benefit analysis for any major regulation. However, the Order allows for a great deal of flexibility in establishing the estimated costs of proposed regulations, and EPA has not always considered all important compliance costs to determine whether a proposed rule is a major regulation. In addition, GAO found that EPA failed to consider all possibilities in determining which alternative would yield a higher net benefit. GAO also found that EPA cost-benefit analyses generally highlighted only single-dollar estimates in summary form, while ranges of estimates for other categories were available but not used. Despite these problems, OMB has generally accepted the EPA analyses.
Download or read book Cost Benefit Analysis and the Environment Recent Developments written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth assessment of the most recent conceptual and methodological developments in cost-benefit analysis and the environment.
Download or read book The Globalization of Cost Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy written by Michael A. Livermore and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues in favor of using cost-benefit analysis globally and examines the positive impact it can have in developing countries using relevant case studies. The book discusses the potential for cost-benefit analysis to provoke a global shift toward stronger and more effective economic policies.
Download or read book Retaking Rationality written by Richard L. Revesz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in a clear and non-technical manner, Retaking Rationality gives progressive groups and the public the tools they need both to understand and to engage in the debate over the economic analysis of environmental, public health, and safety regulation. Since the Reagan presidency, the most important regulations affecting every American have been required to pass a "cost-benefit" test, but most Americans-including many professionals working for progressive institutions or elected officials-do not understand how economic analysis works. The result is that industry and conservative ideologues have twisted economic analysis so that good regulations seem to fail the cost-benefit test. This book argues that the public, and progressive institutions, must take up the fight over how economic analysis is conducted, and gives them the knowledge they need to engage industry and conservatives about when and how economic analysis of regulation should be carried out.
Download or read book Science and Decisions written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Risk assessment has become a dominant public policy tool for making choices, based on limited resources, to protect public health and the environment. It has been instrumental to the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as other federal agencies in evaluating public health concerns, informing regulatory and technological decisions, prioritizing research needs and funding, and in developing approaches for cost-benefit analysis. However, risk assessment is at a crossroads. Despite advances in the field, risk assessment faces a number of significant challenges including lengthy delays in making complex decisions; lack of data leading to significant uncertainty in risk assessments; and many chemicals in the marketplace that have not been evaluated and emerging agents requiring assessment. Science and Decisions makes practical scientific and technical recommendations to address these challenges. This book is a complement to the widely used 1983 National Academies book, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government (also known as the Red Book). The earlier book established a framework for the concepts and conduct of risk assessment that has been adopted by numerous expert committees, regulatory agencies, and public health institutions. The new book embeds these concepts within a broader framework for risk-based decision-making. Together, these are essential references for those working in the regulatory and public health fields.
Download or read book Efficiency in Environmental Regulation written by Ralph A. Luken and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A management agency --such as a publicly or privately owned electric utility -- must, if it is to be efficient in carrying out its day-to-day tasks, have a means of monitoring its performance to assess the efficiency of its operations and the effectiveness of its planning. For example, how did the demand for electricity compare with that assumed in planning? How effective were the incentives applied to induce energy conservation by users? Such ex post analyses are essential for improving the planning process and hence for improving decisions with respect to efficiency and resource allocation. Unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult for public agencies to make such ex post evaluations an integral part of agency activities, whether the agencies are "producers," e. g. , the Corps of Engineers or the Bureau of Reclamation with respect to water resources management, or are regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Food and Drug Administration. Here and there a few ex post analyses of agency programs have been done, but rarely by the responsible agency itself. These analyses have attempted to compare the results actually achieved with the results estimated in planning, either in terms of project outputs or in terms of effectiveness of regulatory and/or economic incentives in inducing desired changes in behavior.
Download or read book Priceless written by Frank Ackerman and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As clinical as it sounds to express the value of human lives, health, or the environment in cold dollars and cents, cost-benefit analysis requires it. More disturbingly, this approach is being embraced by a growing number of politicians and conservative pundits as the most reasonable way to make many policy decisions regarding public health and the environment. By systematically refuting the economic algorithms and illogical assumptions that cost-benefit analysts flaunt as fact, Priceless tells a ''gripping story about how solid science has been shoved to the backburner by bean counters with ideological blinders'' (In These Times). Ackerman and Heinzerling argue that decisions about health and safety should be made ''to reflect not economists' numbers, but democratic values, chosen on moral grounds. This is a vividly written book, punctuated by striking analogies, a good deal of outrage, and a nice dose of humor'' (Cass Sunstein, The New Republic). Essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of human health and environmental protection, Priceless ''shines a bright light on obstacles that stand in the way of good government decisions''.
Download or read book Reforming Regulatory Impact Analysis written by Winston Harrington and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decades, considerable debate has emerged surrounding the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to analyze and make recommendations for environmental and safety regulations. Critics argue that CBA forces values on unquantifiable factors, that it does not adequately measure benefits across generations, and that it is not adaptable in situations of uncertainty. Proponents, on the other hand, believe that a well-done CBA provides useful, albeit imperfect, information to policymakers precisely because of the standard metrics that are applied across the analysis. Largely absent from the debate have been practical questions about how the use of CBA could be improved. Relying on the assumption that CBA will remain an important component in the regulatory process, this new work from Resources for the Future brings together experts representing both sides of the debate to analyze the use of CBA in three key case studies: the Clean Air Interstate Rule, the Clean Air Mercury Rule, and the Cooling Water Intake Structure Rule (Phase II). Each of the case studies is accompanied by critiques from both an opponent and a proponent of CBA and includes consideration of complementary analyses that could have been employed. The work's editors - two CBA supporters and one critic - conclude the report by offering concrete recommendations for improving the use of CBA, focusing on five areas: technical quality of the analyses, relevance to the agency decision-making process, transparency of the analyses, treatment of new scientific findings, and balance in both the analyses and associated processes, including the treatment of distributional consequences.
Download or read book Comparative Analysis of EPA Cost benefit Methodologies written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, reforming the regulatory process has received much attention from diverse groups such as environmentalists, the government, and industry. A cost-benefit analysis can be a useful way to organize and compare the favorable and unfavorable impacts a proposed action night have on society. Since 1981, two Executive Orders have required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other regulatory agencies to perform cost-benefit analyses in support of regulatory decision making. At the EPA, a cost-benefit analysis is published as a document called a regulatory impact analysis (RIA). This report reviews cost-benefit methodologies used by three EPA program offices: Office of Air and Radiation, Office of Solid Waste, and Office of Water. These offices were chosen because they promulgate regulations that affect the policies of this study's sponsor (U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy) and the technologies it uses. The study was conducted by reviewing 11 RIAs recently published by the three offices and by interviewing staff members in the offices. To draw conclusions about the EPA cost-benefit methodologies, their components were compared with those of a standard methodology (i.e., those that should be included in a comprehensive cost-benefit methodology). This study focused on the consistency of the approaches as well as their strengths and weaknesses, since differences in the cost-benefit methodologies themselves or in their application can cause confusion and preclude consistent comparison of regulations both within and among program offices.
Download or read book The Globalization of Cost Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy written by Michael A. Livermore and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cost-benefit analysis -- the formal estimating and weighing of the costs and benefits of policy alternatives -- is a standard tool for governments in advanced economies. Through decades of research and innovation, institutions have developed in the United States, European Union, and other developed countries that examine and weigh policy alternatives as an aid to governmental decisionmaking. Lawmakers in the advanced economies have used cost-benefit analysis to evaluate core environmental and public health questions, such as urban air pollution control, water quality, and occupational safety. Yet despite its broad adoption in the industrialized world, most developing and emerging countries have not yet incorporated cost-benefit analysis into their policymaking process. Because these countries face significant limitations on financial resources and have less ability to shoulder inefficient rules, it is extremely important for their officials to determine which policies maximize net benefits for their societies. The Globalization of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy examines how cost-benefit analysis can help developing and emerging countries confront the next generation of environmental and public-health challenges. Analysis in the book examines the growing reach of cost-benefit analysis; presents relevant case studies where cost-benefit analysis has been incorporated in the Americas, Africa, Middle East, and Asia; and includes a discussion on the conceptual and institutional issues that must be addressed when adopting cost-benefit analysis in developing and emerging countries. In part because governments in developing and emerging countries have not extensively used cost-benefit analysis, there has been only limited research and discussion of the practice and its potential. Most work that has been done is on the domestic or regional level, and has not been widely shared or distributed within the international academic or policy community. By providing both theoretical and practical discussion of this important new tool, this book makes a valuable contribution to the fields of environmental policy, development studies, and environmental law.
Download or read book Cost benefit Analysis written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
