IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/umb/econwp/09117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Incorporating Equity in Regulatory and Benefit-Cost Analysis Using Risk Based Preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Farrow

    (UMBC)

Abstract

Governmental guidance for regulatory and benefit-cost analysis is targeted for applied analysts. Existing Federal guidance recommends sensitivity analysis in general without being specific regarding the implicit distributional assumptions of standard benefit-cost analysis. Recommendations for Federal guidance are developed to: 1) better communicate expectations for distributional analysis, 2) develop guidance for descriptive statistics related to distributional issues, and 3) integrate Government published measures of inequality aversion and to evaluate compensation for identified sensitive populations. While such actions have a data collection and analysis cost, they may make the results of regulatory analysis more relevant by investigating both efficiency and equity measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Farrow, 2009. "Incorporating Equity in Regulatory and Benefit-Cost Analysis Using Risk Based Preferences," UMBC Economics Department Working Papers 09-117, UMBC Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:umb:econwp:09117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.umbc.edu/economics/wpapers/wp_09_117.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan I. Levy & Susan L. Greco & Steven J. Melly & Neha Mukhi, 2009. "Evaluating Efficiency‐Equality Tradeoffs for Mobile Source Control Strategies in an Urban Area," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(1), pages 34-47, January.
    2. Harberger, Arnold C, 1978. "On the Use of Distributional Weights in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(2), pages 87-120, April.
    3. Layard, R. & Mayraz, G. & Nickell, S., 2008. "The marginal utility of income," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(8-9), pages 1846-1857, August.
    4. A. Atkinson, 2008. "More on the measurement of inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(3), pages 277-283, September.
    5. Frank A. Cowell (ed.), 2003. "The Economics of Poverty and Inequality," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, volume 0, number 2280.
    6. Sen, Amartya, 1997. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292975.
    7. Don Fullerton, 2001. "A Framework to Compare Environmental Policies," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(2), pages 224-248, October.
    8. Farrow, Scott, 1998. "Environmental equity and sustainability: rejecting the Kaldor-Hicks criteria," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 183-188, November.
    9. Robert W. Hahn & Patrick M. Dudley, 2007. "How Well Does the U.S. Government Do Benefit-Cost Analysis?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 1(2), pages 192-211, Summer.
    10. repec:reg:rpubli:299 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Kerry Krutilla, 2005. "Using the Kaldor-Hicks tableau format for cost-benefit analysis and policy evaluation," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(4), pages 864-875.
    12. Richard E, Just & Darrell L. Heuth & Andrew Schmitz, 2004. "The Welfare Economics of Public Policy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3342.
    13. Layard, Richard, 1980. "On the Use of Distributional Weights in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(5), pages 1041-1047, October.
    14. L. Eeckhoudt & C. Gollier & H. Schlesinger, 2005. "Economic and financial decisions under risk," Post-Print hal-00325882, HAL.
    15. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    16. Don Fullerton, 2001. "A Framework to Compare Environmental Policies," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(2), pages 224-248, October.
    17. Boadway, Robin W, 1974. "The Welfare Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 84(336), pages 926-939, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John B. Loomis, 2013. "Incorporating distributional issues into benefit–cost analysis: why, how, and two empirical examples using non-market valuation," Chapters, in: Scott O. Farrow & Richard Zerbe, Jr. (ed.), Principles and Standards for Benefit–Cost Analysis, chapter 9, pages 294-316, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Michael Greenberg & Anthony Cox & Vicki Bier & Jim Lambert & Karen Lowrie & Warner North & Michael Siegrist & Felicia Wu, 2020. "Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(S1), pages 2113-2127, November.
    3. Scott Farrow & Judith Shinogle, 2010. "Are There Net State Social Benefits or Costs from Legalizing Slot Machine Gambling?," UMBC Economics Department Working Papers 10-128, UMBC Department of Economics.
    4. Lisa A. Robinson & James K. Hammitt, 2013. "Behavioral economics and the conduct of benefit–cost analysis: towards principles and standards," Chapters, in: Scott O. Farrow & Richard Zerbe, Jr. (ed.), Principles and Standards for Benefit–Cost Analysis, chapter 10, pages 317-363, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Acland, Daniel J. & Greenberg, David H., 2023. "Distributional weighting and welfare/equity tradeoffs: a new approach," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 68-92, March.
    6. Peter B. Dixon & Maureen T. Rimmer & Scott Farrow, 2021. "Modeling the economic effects of increased drop-out rates from high school," Centre of Policy Studies/IMPACT Centre Working Papers g-321, Victoria University, Centre of Policy Studies/IMPACT Centre.
    7. Glenn Sheriff & Kelly B. Maguire, 2020. "Health Risk, Inequality Indexes, and Environmental Justice," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(12), pages 2661-2674, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Udo Ebert, 1986. "Equity and distribution in cost-benefit analysis," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 67-78, December.
    2. Nurmi, Väinö & Ahtiainen, Heini, 2018. "Distributional Weights in Environmental Valuation and Cost-benefit Analysis: Theory and Practice," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 217-228.
    3. Courard-Hauri David & Lauer Stephen A., 2012. "Taking "All Men Are Created Equal" Seriously: Toward a Metric for the Intergroup Comparison of Utility Functions Through Life Values," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 3(3), pages 1-30, August.
    4. Shlomo Yitzhaki, 2001. "A Public Finance Approach to Assessing Poverty Alleviation," NBER Working Papers 8062, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Robert J. Brent, 1984. "Use of Distributional Weights in Cost-Benefit Analysis: a Survey of Schools," Public Finance Review, , vol. 12(2), pages 213-230, April.
    6. Alberto Gago & Xavier Labandeira & Xiral López Otero, 2014. "A Panorama on Energy Taxes and Green Tax Reforms," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 208(1), pages 145-190, March.
    7. Andr, Francisco J. & Gonzlez, Paula & Porteiro, Nicols, 2009. "Strategic quality competition and the Porter Hypothesis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 182-194, March.
    8. Andonie, Costel & Kuzmics, Christoph & Rogers, Brian W., 2019. "Efficiency-based measures of inequality," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 60-69.
    9. Härdle, Wolfgang Karl & Schulz, Rainer & Xie, Taojun, 2019. "Cooling Measures and Housing Wealth: Evidence from Singapore," IRTG 1792 Discussion Papers 2019-001, Humboldt University of Berlin, International Research Training Group 1792 "High Dimensional Nonstationary Time Series".
    10. repec:diw:diwwpp:dp367 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Tugce, Cuhadaroglu, 2013. "My Group Beats Your Group: Evaluating Non-Income Inequalities," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-49, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    12. Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell & Bernard Van Praag, 2003. "Income Satisfaction Inequality and its Causes," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 1(2), pages 107-127, August.
    13. Hendrik Thiel & Stephan L. Thomsen, 2015. "Individual Poverty Paths and the Stability of Control-Perception," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 794, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    14. Christophe Muller & Asha Kannan & Roland Alcindor, 2016. "Multidimensional Poverty in Seychelles," Working Papers halshs-01264444, HAL.
    15. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2003. "Welfare indicators: A review and new perspectives. 1. Measurement of inequality," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 457-497.
    16. Constantine Angyridis & Brennan Scott Thompson, 2016. "Negative income taxes, inequality and poverty," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1016-1034, August.
    17. Rolf Aaberge & Magne Mogstad, 2011. "Robust inequality comparisons," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 353-371, September.
    18. R. Bénabou & E. Ok, 2000. "Mobility as Progressivity: Ranking Income Processes According to Equality of Opportunity," Princeton Economic Theory Papers 00f1, Economics Department, Princeton University.
    19. Gilbert E. Metcalf & David Weisbach, 2012. "Linking Policies When Tastes Differ: Global Climate Policy in a Heterogeneous World," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 6(1), pages 110-129.
    20. Marko Ledić & Ivica Rubil, 2021. "Beyond Wage Gap, Towards Job Quality Gap: The Role of Inter-Group Differences in Wages, Non-Wage Job Dimensions, and Preferences," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(2), pages 523-561, June.
    21. Wolfgang Karl Hardle & Rainer Schulz & Taojun Sie, 2021. "Cooling Measures and Housing Wealth: Evidence from Singapore," Papers 2108.11915, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    benefit; risk; equity; distribution; income;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:umb:econwp:09117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christelle Viauroux (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edumbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.