Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Review of Environmental Economics and Policy
Publication Date
Summer 2025
Page Number
210
Keywords
environmental law, economics, regulation
Disciplines
Environmental Law | Law
Abstract
The November 2023 revision to OMB Circular A-4 expands upon past guidance on distributional assessment in regulatory impact analysis and adds new options for conducting it, such as the use of distributional weights based on the marginal utility of income. This note explores the implications of key changes suggested in the 2023 guidelines and addresses modeling and data challenges that could yield recommendations for future revisions. We suggest that progress in improving distributional assessment in regulatory impact analysis is most likely if federal agencies collaborate with the National Science Foundation to produce model distributional analyses for different types of regulations.
Recommended Citation
W. Kip Viscusi, A. Fraas, John D. Graham, Kerry Krutilla, Randall Lutter, and Jason F. Shogren,
Improving Distributional Analysis in Regulatory Evaluation: An Assessment of the 2023 Circular A-4, 19 Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. 210
(2025)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1723