What Every Environmental Regulator Needs To Know About Cost-Benefit Analysis

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:00:00 -0400

If you are the person who signs off on a rule to clean up drinking water, to retire a coal fleet or to keep the last spawning run of salmon alive, listen closely.

The analytical scaffolding that is supposed to make your job neutral — cost-benefit analysis — is swaying under its own weight.

Regulators around the world were handed a simple instruction in the 1980s. Show, in dollars and cents, that the benefits of a regulation justify its costs. Executive orders demanded it. Courts sanitized it. For forty years, the cost-benefit apparatus has felt like solid ground to stand on. Sound like a bureaucratic backwater? It isn’t.

Never Assume Regulation Kills Efficiency if You Want a Market That Actually Works

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 -0400

Never walk into a policy debate assuming regulation is a cuss word. I get why people do it. The term conjures images of stacked paperwork, permitting delays, and some mid-level official demanding a third environmental assessment for a storage shed. That version of regulation deserves its bad reputation.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: every market that has ever functioned at scale has been built on a foundation of rules. Every single one. The question was never whether to regulate. It was always how, and how much, and in whose interest.

Cost-Benefit Analysis on Rational America

What Every Environmental Regulator Needs To Know About Cost-Benefit Analysis

Never Assume Regulation Kills Efficiency if You Want a Market That Actually Works