Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health

by Michael A. Livermore, Richard L. Revesz

Overview

For decades, administrations of both political parties have used cost-benefit analysis to evaluate and improve federal policy in a variety of areas, including health and the environment. Today, this model is under grave threat.

In Reviving Rationality, Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz explain how Donald Trump has destabilized the decades-long bipartisan consensus that federal agencies must base their decisions on evidence, expertise, and analysis. Administrative agencies are charged by law with protecting values like stable financial markets and clean air. Their decisions often have profound consequences, affecting everything from the safety of workplaces to access to the dream of home ownership. Under the Trump administration, agencies have been hampered in their ability to advance these missions by the conflicting ideological whims of a changing cast of political appointees and overwhelming pressure from well-connected interest groups. Inconvenient evidence has been ignored, experts have been sidelined, and analysis has been used to obscure facts, rather than inform the public. The results are grim: incoherent policy, social division, defeats in court, a demoralized federal workforce, and a loss of faith in government's ability to respond to pressing problems.

This experiment in abandoning the norms of good governance has been a disaster. Reviving Rationality explains how and why our government has abandoned rationality in recent years, and why it is so important for future administrations to restore rigorous cost-benefit analysis if we are to return to a policymaking approach that effectively tackles the most pressing problems of our era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197539446
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/07/2020
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Michael A. Livermore, Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, Richard L. Revesz, Lawrence King Professor of Law and dean emeritus, NYU School of Law

Livermore and Revesz are the authors of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health (Oxford) and the editors of The Globalization of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy (Oxford). Together, they founded the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, which Revesz now directs.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Guardrails

1. Politics and Regulation
2. A Threatening Synthesis
3. Staying in Bounds
4. A Retreat from Reason

Part II. Charade

5. The Illusion of Costs without Benefits
6. Erasing Public Health Science
7. Resurrecting Discredited Models
8. Ignoring Indirect Benefits
9. Trivializing Climate Change
10. Manipulating Transfers

Part III. Rebuilding

11. Future Directions
12. Improving the Guardrails

Editorial Reviews

"Mike Livermore and Ricky Revesz have written a terrific critique of politicized dysfunction in regulation, and a call to restore analytic rigor." — Jonathan Wiener, Yale Journal on Regulation

"Brilliant and provocative ... Livermore & Revesz give a richly resourced account of the political history of cost-benefit analysis, including a detailed history of the partisan shift in support for cost-benefit analysis over time." — Arden Rowell, Yale Journal on Regulation

"Terrific." — Matt Adler, Yale Journal on Regulation

"Reviving Rationality is an important read from two of the legal academy's foremost experts on the administrative state. It provides a nice history of cost-benefit analysis, how it has evolved analytically, institutionally, and how it has mapped to our changing political landscape." — Jed Stiglitz, Yale Journal on Regulation

"A serious affliction requires potent and targeted medicine. And the situation that Livermore and Revesz so deftly describe in Reviving Rationality is clearly serious. The authors recount nothing short of a siege undertaken by the Trump administration to undermine the institution of cost-benefit analysis (CBA). They carefully and convincingly detail the administration's tactics, ranging from manipulating the social cost of carbon to adopting policies that focus on costs and ignore regulatory benefits. This is a book that should be read widely by academics and practitioners alike." — Rachel Potter, Yale Journal on Regulation

"With Reviving Rationality, Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz ("L&R") have produced another important, timely, and provocative work on the use of cost-benefit analysis in government decisionmaking ... L&R's book is important exactly because it reminds us what was at stake during the Trump Administration." — Caroline Cecot, Yale Journal on Regulation

"One of the book's important contributions is its meticulous documentation of just how incompetent, if not dishonest, the Trump Administration was in its regulatory analysis. The book also shows how often the Administration violated the practices of its predecessors, Democratic and Republican alike. Many of the individual episodes Livermore and Revesz discuss are familiar, but the level of detail and range of incidents they provide will be useful to readers with many different perspectives on government regulation." — Daniel Farber, Yale Journal on Regulation

"Mike Livermore and Ricky Revesz should be applauded for doing the near-impossible in Reviving Rationality — spinning a lively and engaging narrative about the driest of subjects, the conduct of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) by government bureaucrats. The story they tell has all the elements of a classic morality play — a hero (cost-benefit analysis), a villain (Donald Trump), and an epic struggle between good and evil (or, more specifically, between rationality and irrationality). I certainly enjoyed the ride, and there's no question that Livermore and Revesz have done the world a great service by so carefully and painstakingly documenting so many of the excesses and outrages of the Trump administration's approach to regulatory policy. This book will undoubtedly take its place in an easy-to-reach spot on my bookshelf next to their previous volume, Retaking Rationality, which has been an indispensable reference." — Amy Sinden, Yale Journal on Regulation

"This is an important, must-read book and intervention into current debates about the role of cost-benefit analysis and centralized review of regulations ... Democratic and Republican administrations would be wise to read — and apply the lessons learned from — both Retaking Rationality and Reviving Rationality." — Christopher J. Walker, Yale Journal on Regulation

"Reviving Rationality by Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz is a timely and important work. While it has many virtues, the one that particularly struck me is its seamless blending of the arcane world of cost-benefit analysis and regulation with the broader political context of the Trump years. Clearly as Livermore and Revesz articulate, this broader context had profound impacts on the regulatory world from 2017 until 2021." — Stuart Shapiro, Yale Journal on Regulation

"The more this book is circulated, the better, especially in public policy classrooms, where it might have the most influence and do the most good for the longest time." — Timothy J. Brennan, Yale Journal on Regulation

"Reviving Rationality painstakingly documents the Trump EPA's playbook to shift the agency's priorities away from sound science and public health protections, toward fossil fuel polluters and other special interests. Livermore and Revesz detail the deep ramifications it has had for the agency's ability to build cleaner American cars, protect children's brains from the damages of mercury pollution, tackle the growing threats of climate change, and so much more. They also provide a path forward for restoring EPA and reestablishing the rule of law to protect our health, our communities, and our children's future." — Gina McCarthy, President and Executive Officer of the National Resources Defense Council and former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Barack Obama

"A spectacular achievement, and the best imaginable foundation for thinking about the modern regulatory state. In an era focused on pandemics, climate change, inequality, and public health, Livermore and Revesz show that using the best available science, and the best available economics, offers the best path forward — and will help the least advantaged among us." — Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard Law School, and former Administrator, White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Barack Obama

"This well-reasoned book is refreshing therapy for those of us who are sick of the ideological wars in America's regulatory politics. The authors call for resumption of the legitimate roles of expertise and analysis in public administration." — John D. Graham, Professor, Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University, and former Administrator, White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under George W. Bush

"This book is another thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution by the authors to our understanding of critical aspects of the regulatory process. The issues discussed and perspectives provided will be particularly important to our country in the years ahead. It is a must read for those involved in the process as well as those who want a clear explanation for how we can and should evaluate government policy." — Sally Katzen, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence, New York University School of Law, and former Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Bill Clinton

From the Publisher