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80 Tex. L. Rev. 1997 (2001-2002)
Counting the Cost of Health, Safety, and Environmental Regulation

handle is hein.journals/tlr80 and id is 2011 raw text is: Counting the Cost of Health, Safety, and Environmental Regulation Thomas 0. McGarity* and Ruth Ruttenberg' While EPA devotes substantial resources to cost-benefit analyses when developing new regulations, the agency seldom looks back at the actual costs and benefits after those regulations have been inplemnented. 1 How is my career goizg to be advanced by doing a study that shows that three years ago the agency made a wrong prediction? It is not in my best interest. 2 I. Introduction In an article aptly titled Regulatory Costs of Mythic Proportions, Professor Lisa Heinzerling demonstrated that tables purporting to display the cost-per-life-saved of dozens of regulatory interventions are based upon erroneous and often outrageous assumptions.3 Yet legal scholars and other policy analysts, for lack of any better source of information, routinely incor- porate these tables (a form of urban legend, in Professor Heinzerling's view) into critiques of existing regulatory programs as if they were based upon hard empirical data.4 Professor Heinzerling's analyses have focused primarily upon the denominator of the cost-per-life-saved ratio in these tables.5 She has rather convincingly demonstrated that many regulatory interventions that appear to be wildly expensive when viewed from this perspective were probably not so costly because the number used in the denominator seriously underestimated the benefits of the regulations.6 In examining the numerator, Professor Heinzerling came to the surprising, but W. James Kronzer Chair in Trial and Appellate Advocacy, University of Texas School of Law. President, Ruth Ruttenberg & Associates, Inc. and Senior Staff Associate George Meany Center for Labor Studies, National Labor College 1. U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF EPA'S REGULATIONS THROUGH RETROSPECTIVE STUDIES 13 (1999) [hereinafter 1999 GAO RETROSPECTIVE EVALUATION REPORT]. 2. Anonymous EPA regulatory analyst quoted in THOMAS 0. MCGARITY, REINVENTING RATIONALITY: THE ROLE OF REGULATORY ANALYSIS IN THE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY 137 (1991) [hereinafter MCGARITY, REINVENTING RATIONALITY]. 3. Lisa Heinzerling, Regulatory Costs of Mythic Proportions, 107 YALE LJ. 1981 (1998). 4. Id. at 1984. 5. Id. at 1999. 6. Id.

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