|
|
|
|
Government & Markets
Presidentially Directed Policy Change: The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs as Partisan or Moderator?
How do presidents’ politics affect regulatory rulemaking? In this article, Simon F. Haeder and Susan Webb Yackee cross-reference approximately 1,500 final-stage executive branch regulations with an index of the partisanship of federal agencies derived from a survey of government employees. Focusing on the Bush II and Obama presidencies, the authors examine which agencies’ rules were most likely to be significantly changed by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). In particular, they test the hypotheses that the White House may be more likely to change rules proposed by agencies with “extreme” politics or politics that oppose the president in power. Haeder and Yackee find support for neither theory. Instead, they determine that White Houses of both parties tend to change rules proposed by the most liberal agencies, suggesting that the OIRA review process may be a tool for presidentially directed deregulation.
[Read the paper]
Behavioral Insights in Consultation Design: A Dialogical Architecture
In this paper, Fabrizio Cafaggi and Giacomo Sillari draw on lessons from behavioral research to suggest ways that regulatory consultation processes—such as public notice and comment—could better contribute to regulation in the public interest. Whereas previous work on the implications of behavioral research for administrative law has largely focused on the application of regulations, Cafaggi and Sillari instead explore the consequences of this research for drafting regulations. For instance, stakeholders’ ability to estimate the likelihood of low-probability events, such as incidents that harm workers’ health or safety, may affect how they assess the risks of such events and the costs of regulations that seek to prevent them. Cafaggi and Sillari model different ways that regulators can seek public comment from stakeholders in the rulemaking process, altering the number of discussion rounds and the visibility of comments to other stakeholders. They also use game theory to analyze which procedures are most likely to promote dialogue or elicit useful information for regulators. The authors conclude by emphasizing the value in broadening findings about the limits of human rationality to include not just the regulated, but the regulators as well.
[Read the paper]
The Financialization of Policy Preferences: Financial Asset Ownership, Regulation, and Crisis Management
Does investing pension dollars more closely align workers’ preferences with the interests of the financial industry? In this paper, Stefano Pagliari, Lauren M. Phillips, and Kevin L. Young examine the relationship between financial asset ownership and support for two sets of policies enacted in the wake of the 2008 crisis: financial sector reforms outlined in the Dodd-Frank Act and bank bailouts facilitated by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Drawing on data that tracked individuals’ financial investments and their attitudes on financial regulation over time, the authors find that financial asset ownership is associated with higher support for the bank bailouts and lower support for more robust government oversight of the financial industry. However, the authors’ analysis indicates that this effect is modest and more strongly observed among high-income households, suggesting that increased financialization has yet to significantly disrupt traditional divides in public opinion on economic policies.
[Read the paper]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
