Congress and Cost-Benefit Analysis, with Caroline Cecot and Ricky Revesz (Congress and the Administrative State Series)

We often think of modern cost-benefit analysis as being a requirement primarily of executive orders, not statutes. Needless to say, Executive Order 12291 and 12866, and other executive orders and presidential documents, are of central importance. But Congress has done much on matters of cost-benefit analysis, too, often requiring agencies to consider costs and benefits, and sometimes even requiring rules to be net-beneficial.

Professor Caroline Cecot of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School explores this in her new Gray Center working paper, “Congress and the Stability of the Cost-Benefit Analysis Consensus.” She discusses it in today’s episode, with Gray Center Executive Director Adam White and with Professor Ricky Revesz, NYU’s Lawrence King Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Policy Integrity.