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Government Regulation and Cost-Benefit Analysis
How agencies weigh lives, dollars, and freedoms—and why economists became indispensable to the regulatory state.
Modern rulemaking often requires estimating benefits and harms of pollution limits, safety standards, and market rules. Cost-benefit analysis translates incommensurable values into common units imperfectly but transparently.
Pushback and politics
Critics argue CBA buries dignity, equity, and precaution; defenders call it disciplined democracy. Deregulation waves sometimes attacked process costs; crises and scandal renewed appetite for oversight.
Content plan alignment
This topic mirrors the P2 page in economists-hour-content-plan.md pairing regulation with CBA; glossary entries on cost-benefit analysis, deregulation, competition, and fiscal policy supply definitions.