Introduction Business Roundtable has long advocated a wide variety of reforms to improve the regulatory process, including improvements related to cost-benefit analysis.2 Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) has been a key component of federal regulatory policy for many decades. As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has noted in the preamble to this proposed rule, since 1981 most federal agencies, including EPA, have been required to assess the costs and benefits of proposed and final regulations that could have a significant effect on the economy. CBA has enjoyed bipartisan support across multiple administrations.
A well-conducted CBA helps ensure that the tradeoffs inherent in any regulation are described, quantified and evaluated when regulatory options are proposed and before a rule is finalized. Given the important role that CBA plays in ensuring that federal regulators find the right balance between the positive impacts rules are intended to produce and the costs those rules impose, it is important that this analysis be as rigorous and transparent as possible and developed in accordance with best practices from the economic, engineering, physical and biological sciences.