Tag Archives: Mercatus Center

A quick note on regulation

I’m taking a class on regulation this fall. I’ve heard from some awesome economists who are trying to reform the regulatory system, from both the inside-out and outside-in. Specifically, they want to beef up the “regulatory impact analyses” (RIAs) agencies are required to submit alongside all proposed rules with an anticipated impact of over $100 million. Think of them as cost-benefit analyses of the proposed regulation.

Believe it or not, RIAs are relatively new—regulatory agencies operated for decades without any consistently robust assessment of their proposed rules’ economic costs and benefits. Only in recent years has much attention been given to RIAs. The very nature of most regulation makes RIAs pretty damning for their accompanying rules. By my read, economists constructing RIAs are often hard-pressed to justify many of the rules that cross their desks. The RIAs are therefore lacking in some big ways. But to their credit, RIA authors at least give the public something to look at when evaluating proposed regulations. This can only help to deter bad rules.

Here’s a “report card” from the Mercatus Center that grades the quality of these analyses. Worth a look.

Heading home for a new beginning

I don’t often write about my personal life on this blog, but I’ll probably look back on today as one of the more consequential days of my life. I figure that makes it worth mentioning here.

As of 4:30 p.m. today, I’m no longer on staff at my job of the past 14 months. I moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for this job in May 2013–one week after graduating from college. Saying goodbye wasn’t easy. I’ve learned at lot in Harrisburg and will always think fondly of this city and region.

But last spring, I was accepted into the MA in Economics program at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. I’ve long been a fan of GMU’s economics program, so getting in was quite exciting (and surprising, at least to me). My wife encouraged me to apply, and was eager to try her hand at a new job, as she’s yet to experience nursing outside of central Pennsylvania. These things, along with the fact that we both grew up in Fairfax and most of her family lives there, made the right decision quite obvious (even if hard to make).

So we took the plunge. She found work in Fairfax and quit her job in Harrisburg. I quit mine soon after.

I start evening classes at GMU in late August and will write as much as I can during the day–at least daily on this blog, and hopefully weekly at other, more “formal” publications. I’ve also accepted a position as a senior writer for an exciting startup. It’s still in stealth mode, but I’ll update you as soon as I have the go-ahead.

To kick it all off, I’m attending the Advanced Austrian Seminar at the Mercatus Center late next week. I’m told Israel Kirzner himself will present at the seminar, so to say I’m excited is definitely an understatement.