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Regulation and Oversight: Advice for the New Administration
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
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Many analysts are suggesting that the United States is about to enter a new regulatory era. They point to the need for more regulation on a host of issues, ranging from financial services to food supply. What kind of new federal regulations should we expect? How will political considerations affect the creation of new rules? A distinguished group of scholars and practitioners will answer these and other questions and offer advice to the new administration on designing better regulations.
Participating in the discussion will be Cary Coglianese, director of the Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; Susan Dudley, the current administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget; two former OIRA administrators, John Graham (2001–2006) and Sally Katzen (1993–98); and Resources for the Future senior fellow Richard Morgenstern. Robert W. Hahn, executive director of the AEI Reg-Markets Center, will moderate.
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AGENDA
Wednesday, December 10, 2008 2:45 – 4:35 p.m. Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
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| 2:30 P.M. |
Registration |
| 2:45 P.M. |
Welcome |
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ROBERT W. HAHN, Reg-Markets Center |
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Panelists |
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| CARY COGLIANESE, University of Pennsylvania Law School |
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SUSAN DUDLEY, Office of Management and Budget |
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JOHN GRAHAM, Indiana University |
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SALLY KATZEN, George Mason University School of Law |
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| RICHARD MORGENSTERN, Resources for the Future |
| 4:30 P.M. |
Adjournment |
Please register for this event online at www.aei.org/event1838.
For more information, please contact Adam Schmidt at 202.862.5903 or [email protected].
BIOGRAPHIES
Cary Coglianese is an associate dean, the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law, a professor of political science, and the director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He specializes in the study of regulation and regulatory processes, with a particular emphasis on the empirical evaluation of alternative regulatory strategies and the role of disputing, negotiation, and business-government relations in regulatory policy making. Prior to joining Penn Law, Mr. Coglianese spent twelve years on the faculty at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he served as the chair of the regulatory policy program and director of the politics research group. His work has appeared in the Administrative Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Law & Society Review, the Michigan Law Review, and the Stanford Law Review, among others. His books include Regulating from the Inside: Can Environmental Management Systems Achieve Policy Goals? (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
Susan Dudley is the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget. Before joining OIRA, Ms. Dudley directed the regulatory studies program at the nonprofit Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where she also taught courses on regulation. Earlier in her career, Ms. Dudley served as a career civil servant at OIRA, at the Environmental Protection Agency, and at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
John Graham is dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Mr. Graham’s research includes government reform, energy and the environment, and the future of automobiles in both developed and developing countries. Previously, he served as dean of the Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School at the RAND Corporation in California. Previously, Mr. Graham served as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from 2001 to 2006. Prior to the OMB, Mr. Graham was a tenured professor of policy and decision sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Robert W. Hahn is a senior fellow at AEI and founder and executive director of AEI’s Reg-Markets Center, which continues the AEI-Brookings Joint Center’s mission of examining cutting-edge issues in law, economics, regulation, and antitrust. Previously, he worked for the Council of Economic Advisers and served on the faculties of Harvard University and Carnegie Mellon University. He frequently contributes to leading scholarly journals and general-interest periodicals, including the American Economic Review, the Yale Law Journal, Science, and the New York Times. Mr. Hahn is the author of Reviving Regulatory Reform: A Global Perspective (AEI Press, 2000) and several other books. In addition, Mr. Hahn is cofounder of the Community Preparatory School, an inner-city middle school in Providence, R.I., that provides opportunities for disadvantaged youth to achieve their full potential.
Sally Katzen is a visiting professor of law at the George Mason University School of Law. Ms. Katzen previously taught at the University of Michigan Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the Georgetown University Law Center. From 1993 until 1998, she served as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and then became the deputy director of the White House National Economic Council (1998–99). Ms. Katzen returned to the OMB in 1999 as the deputy director for management. Before her government service, Ms. Katzen was a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, specializing in administrative law and legislative matters. She has served in various leadership roles in the American Bar Association, including chair of the section on administrative law and regulatory practice.
Richard Morgenstern is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. Mr. Morgenstern’s research focuses on the economic analysis of environmental issues with an emphasis on the costs, benefits, evaluation, and design of environmental policies, especially economic incentive measures. His analysis also focuses on climate change, including the design of cost-effective policies to reduce emissions in the United States and abroad. Perviously, Mr. Morgenstern was a senior economic counselor to the undersecretary for global affairs at the Department of State, where he participated in negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol. He also served at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he acted as deputy administrator (1993); assistant administrator for policy, planning, and evaluation (1991–93); and director of the Office of Policy Analysis (1983–95). Formerly a tenured professor at the City University of New York, Mr. Morgenstern has also taught at Oberlin College, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Yeshiva University, and American University. He has served on expert committees of the National Academy of Sciences and as a consultant to various organizations.
CONFERENCE SUMMARY
WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 12, 2008--Of the many challenges awaiting President-elect Barack Obama, repairing the nation's economy is the greatest. And at the core of the debate over the causes of and cure for the housing and financial market disorder is the widespread belief that deregulation is the culprit.
Panelists at an AEI Reg-Markets Center event on December 10, including the current and immediate past administrators of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget, debated the proper role of regulation in the upcoming administration. They generally agreed that Obama will face significant pressure to impose new regulations, but they asserted that regulatory impact analysis should continue to be employed. Additionally, they acknowledged that Obama's pledge to make government more transparent could strengthen the regulatory analysis process and that climate change regulation will provide unique obstacles for future regulators.
According to Robert W. Hahn, a senior fellow at AEI and the executive director of the Reg-Markets Center, the current economic downturn provides Obama with both an opportunity and a challenge as he approaches regulatory policy: "The challenge is to avoid legislative and regulatory proposals that are likely to do more harm than good. The opportunity is to try to extend the move toward improving regulatory governance."
However, balancing challenge and opportunity could prove dicey. Indiana University's John Graham, a former OIRA administrator, said Obama will confront a "tremendous dilemma" when it comes to regulation. While the new president will face overwhelming pressure from Democrats and others pushing for more regulation, Graham argued, Obama's economic advisers are not of the same mold. "I don't think [Obama's] economic team--Larry Summers and colleagues--[are] going to be very receptive to a massive program that's going to reregulate the American economy," he said.
In order to improve the regulatory process in hard economic times, Graham suggested appointing a "thoughtful, careful OIRA administrator." Current OIRA administrator Susan Dudley recommended that her successor trust OIRA's career staff and respect the sound principles of benefit-cost analysis. "A good analysis discusses all of the outcomes," she said.
When it comes to climate change policy, a central Obama campaign pledge, Dudley and Graham noted the difficulty of analyzing the economic benefits and costs of proposed rules but advised future regulators to continue economic analysis. Graham suggested that Obama appoint a strong science adviser who is active in White House policy and risk-analysis debates. He also urged the new administration to include a "fairness review" to analyze the impact of regulations, particularly climate rules, from the perspective of the bottom quartile of earners.
Oversight of the regulatory process should also be more transparent, the panelists concluded. Resources for the Future senior fellow Richard Morgenstern said the public would benefit from greater electronic access to agencies' regulatory impact analyses (RIAs), reports that appraise the costs and benefits to society of proposed regulations. To increase their value to the public, RIAs should "spell out the physical terms of [regulatory] outcomes," he said. Morgenstern also proposed a greater period for public inspection of RIAs, calling the Environmental Protection Agency's current three-week window of access before a rule is promulgated too short.
Cary Coglianese of the University of Pennsylvania Law School also stressed the importance of greater access to regulatory analyses but offered words of caution regarding public participation. "Just because you can buy car parts on the internet," he said, "does not make you any more able to repair your own car."
--ADAM SCHMIDT |