Risky Business: Thinking About the Benefits and Costs of Government Regulation

No federal agency makes a systematic or comprehensive effort to estimate the health and safety costs of proposed government regulations. Too often, these costs arc treated as though they are an impolite intrusion in a serious debate. The time has come to explore new ways to estimate direct and indirect costs of a proposed regulation and bring these into the debate. Unfortunately, the most serious recent attempt to do this was swiftly rebuffed.