1,720,988 research outputs found
Costs and Consequences of Federal Telecommunications Regulations
Get PDFFederal regulation of telecommunication profoundly affects United States consumers, determining what services are priced above and below cost, what kinds of technologies and services are offered and when, and what firms are allowed to compete. In this Article, the Author surveys the voluminous literature on the economic costs and outcomes of these regulations, focusing predominantly on the effects of regulation on prices, quantity, quality of service, and overall consumer and social welfare. The Author estimates costs and assesses outcomes for ten types of federal telecommunications regulated activity: telecommunications regulatory spending, long-distance access charges, universal service funding, local number portability, enhanced 911, miscellaneous wireless mandates, spectrum management, satellite regulation, unbundled network elements, and resale of the incumbent\u27s services. The Article highlights particularly inefficient and costly regulations while also drawing attention to regulations that have a significant positive outcome for consumers. The Author concludes with an overall estimate of the cost of federal telecommunications regulation to United States consumers
Building Capacity for Economic Analysis at Independent Agencies
No full textIndependent regulatory agencies face increasing pressure to improve the quality of the economic analysis that informs their decisions about regulations. The administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Neomi Rao, has argued that regulations from independent agencies should be subject to the same economic analysis standards and review procedures as regulations from executive branch agencies. Sixteen state governors and attorneys general signed a letter requesting that President Donald J. Trump issue an executive order to accomplish that goal. Former OIRA administrators of both political parties agree. Requiring economic analysis and OIRA review is also one of the statutory regulatory process reforms that enjoys bipartisan support in Congress. Legal scholars like Cass Sunstein, Jonathan Masur and Eric A. Posner predict that federal courts will eventually adopt the doctrine that it is arbitrary for an agency to ignore economic factors if the authorizing statute does not prohibit the agency from considering them. In short, economic analysis of independent agency regulations is not just good public policy but it may soon become the law. Consequently, independent agencies should build the capacity to conduct more thorough economic analysis and integrate it into the regulation-writing process. In particular, independent agencies should undertake five steps to improve the quality of economic analysis and its use in decisions: In addition to building capacity, there is the issue of how the agency can credibly commit itself to implementing and sustaining these reforms. Experience shows it is possible for an agency to do so. To some extent, bureaucratic inertia plays a useful role. Restructuring of agencies and establishment of internal operating procedures are costly, so structural changes are more likely to survive than just changes in leadership or policies. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, has housed most of its economists in a separate Bureau of Economics since 1963. The Economic Analysis Group in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division was created in 1973. An agency can also commit by putting its policies and procedures for economic analysis in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, codified its regulatory analysis procedures for its regulations establishing energy or water efficiency standards for appliances. In the CFR, the Energy Department outlines major factors it will consider when designing the regulations, explains how the analysis of these factors will be conducted, commits to publishing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that specifies the alternative standards under consideration and preliminary analysis of those standards, and establishes procedures for stakeholder feedback. The Federal Communications Commission used a less detailed version of this strategy when it created its Office of Economics and Analytics in January 2018. Duties of the new office listed in the CFR include preparation of “a rigorous, economically-grounded cost-benefit analysis for every rulemaking deemed to have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more.” Short of amending its portion of the CFR, an agency can make a public commitment that would be embarrassing or difficult to renege upon. The general counsel and chief economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took this approach in March 2012 when they issued a joint guidance memo on economic analysis that essentially committed the SEC to following the analytical principles in Executive Order 12,866. The quality of the SEC’s economic analysis has improved substantially since then. Finally, the agency can contract for external enforcement of its economic analysis obligations. The 2018 Memorandum of Agreement between the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget on OIRA review of tax regulations is a recent example. For decades, the Internal Revenue Service had benefited from a loophole that exempted its regulations from OIRA review. The recent agreement closes that loophole by specifying that Executive Order 12,866 applies to tax regulations and establishing deadlines for OIRA review of tax regulations. By taking these steps, independent agencies can help ensure that their regulatory decisions are guided by actual evidence about regulation’s likely effects and less by mere intentions or hopes. Given the mounting external pressures for improved economic analysis at independent agencies, the agencies that adopt these measures sooner will look farsighted indeed
Why and How Independent Agencies Should Conduct Regulatory Impact Analysis
Get PDFIndependent regulatory agencies face increasing pressure to conduct high-quality economic analysis of regulations, similar to the regulatory impact analysis conducted by executive branch agencies. Such analysis could be required by evolving judicial doctrines, regulatory reform statutes, or executive order. This article explains how regulatory impact analysis can contribute to smarter regulation, documents the current low quality of such analysis at many independent regulatory agencies, and offers a blueprint that independent agencies can use to build their capacity to conduct objective, high-quality analysis
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Forty Years After Surface Freight Deregulation
No full textCOVID-19 and chaos will dominate 2020’s legacy. But for regulatory scholars, 2020 also offered some milestones worth celebrating. This year marked the 40th anniversary of two landmark pieces of bipartisan legislation deregulating surface freight services: the Staggers Rail Act and the Motor Carrier Act. Both laws were motivated by evidence-based empirical analysis and both delivered significant consumer benefits. President Jimmy Carter signed the Motor Carrier Act in 1980. The legislation removed federal entry controls in interstate trucking and made it easier for carriers to reduce rates. President Carter’s signing statement predicted gains for consumers, shippers, and the trucking industry. President Carter also signed the Staggers Rail Act in 1980. The Staggers Act deregulated rail rates for some traffic, allowed the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to deregulate rates for other traffic, permitted railroads and shippers to negotiate unregulated contract rates, and established criteria for regulating rates if a shipper has no cost-effective alternative to a single railroad. The legislation also made it easier for railroads to discontinue offering service on unprofitable routes, and it ended the practice of “open routing,” which allowed shippers to force a railroad to carry freight between virtually any two points on its system. The regulators themselves were a positive force for change. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Carter appointed ICC commissioners who favored competition and deregulation. For example, ICC chairmen Daniel O’Neal and Darius Gaskins both sought to reform regulation using the ICC’s existing legal authority, and they both supported deregulatory legislation. Leading up to 1980, economic research had demonstrated that regulation created noticeable cost and price increases. Policy advocates and policymakers took note. Pre-deregulation rail studies identified two sources of inefficiency: misallocation of resources associated with rate regulation (deadweight loss), and inflated costs created by route regulation and other restrictions on lower-cost technologies and business methods. These inefficiencies corresponded to the economic distinction between allocative efficiency—created when prices more closely reflect costs—and productive efficiency—created when firms develop new products, new services, new sources of supply, or new methods of organizing production. The effects of regulation on productive efficiency far exceeded its effects on allocative efficiency. Most empirical studies estimated annual deadweight losses somewhere between 900 million in the 1970s. Studies also estimated that regulation inflated railroad costs by up to 7 billion in federal subsidies before it was privatized through a public stock offering in the late 1980s. In contrast, the interstate trucking industry was reasonably stable and profitable in the 1970s. Federal regulation primarily affected for-hire interstate trucking companies that carried goods for others. Some shippers used their own trucking divisions instead. Such “private carriage” allowed shippers to avoid the inflated costs of for-hire carriers, but private carriage often involved wasteful empty backhauls because private carriers could not carry goods for others. A key indicator that the for-hire trucking industry earned above-competitive profits was the fact that truckers’ operating certificates—which conveyed the ICC’s permission to operate—had a positive value. Thomas Gale Moore estimated that in the mid-1970s, interstate operating certificates were worth approximately 15 percent of trucking companies’ annual revenues, or 3 billion. The trucking cartel shared its rents with unionized labor. During the 1970s, employees of regulated intercity trucking firms received compensation between about 40 percent to 55 percent greater than employees or owner-operators at comparable unregulated trucking firms. Moore estimated that members of the labor union International Brotherhood of Teamsters received approximately 3.3 billion annually from shippers and consumers to trucking companies and their employees. After 1980, the actual results of surface freight deregulation exceeded economists’ expectations. Between 1981 and 1996, real rail revenue per ton-mile fell by nearly 50 percent. At least one-third of this rate reduction can be attributed to the Staggers Act. Deregulated rates saved shippers up to 5 billion and 100 million annually. For trucking services, the 1980 Motor Carrier Act led to large reductions in trucking rates and improvements in service. By 1985, deregulation saved shippers 6 billion due to lower private carrier costs, and $1.6 billion annually due to more rapid service. By 1998, real operating costs per vehicle-mile fell by 75 percent for truckload carriers and by 35 percent for less-than-truckload carriers. Open market entry reduced economic rents given to workers. New entry increased trucking employment from about one million in 1978 to two million in 1996. Many of these new workers were nonunion—union membership declined by almost 25 percent. Over that same time, real weekly earnings in the industry fell by about 30 percent. Open market entry more than doubled the percentage of for-hire truckers who were owner-operators rather than employees. In addition, deregulation increased the proportion of Black truck drivers in the most lucrative market segment: the interstate for-hire segment. After deregulation, the proportion of Black drivers at for-hire trucking companies and the proportion of Black union members at for-hire trucking companies both increased by more than 50 percent. Deregulation virtually eliminated the Black-white wage differential in the for-hire industry by reducing white workers’ wages, implying that white workers had received most of the rents created by regulation. The Staggers Act and the Motor Carrier Act are widely regarded as bipartisan policy successes. Forty years later, no one has seriously proposed to reverse them. At the time of these laws’ adoption, scholarly research had well documented the actual effects of regulation, which helped motivate an ideologically diverse political coalition to pursue reform. The broader lesson for today is that perhaps a renewed commitment to evidence-based analysis could help bridge partisan divisions that impede lasting progress on some of today’s pressing policy problems
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Systematic Study Shows Improvement in SEC Economic Analysis
No full textTwo sets of events have sparked scholarly controversy over the proper role of economic analysis in federal financial regulation. First, a trio of court decisions between 2005 and 2011 struck down major U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations on the basis of faulty economic analysis. Second, leading lawmakers have sought to require financial regulators to conduct benefit-cost analysis similar to the regulatory impact analysis conducted by executive branch agencies when proposing new major regulations. Most of the academic controversy has focused specifically on the role of benefit-cost calculations. Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Gordon, for example, argues that financial regulators cannot predict the results of financial regulations because individuals change their behavior in response to regulations in unpredictable ways. Harvard Law School Professor John Coates espouses “conceptual” economic analysis but claims that any attempts to quantify benefits and costs are mere guesswork. Chicago Booth School of Business’s John Cochrane, although optimistic that benefit-cost logic provides the right way of framing the policy discussion, warns that responses to economic incentives that would be considered “indirect” effects of other types of regulation actually create the major benefits and costs associated with financial regulation. Others, however, offer a more sanguine view of the role of economic analysis in the financial regulatory arena. For one, Chicago Law School Professor Eric Posner and Microsoft Research’s Glenn Weyl suggest that economic analysis of financial regulation actually should be easier than it is within those regulatory fields in which it is already employed (such as safety and health regulation): as they explain, the relevant valuations are already expressed in monetary terms and the actors are motivated by money. And even when some information is missing, Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein argues, agencies feasibly can still make an effort to quantify benefits and costs, identify ranges of outcomes, acknowledge uncertainties, and employ “breakeven analysis”—a method of comparing benefits and costs in the face of information gaps that might otherwise make conducting cost-benefit analysis impossible for financial regulators. In 2012, the SEC’s Office of General Counsel and the Commission’s then-Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation issued guidance for economic analysis of regulations in response to several court decisions and other external criticism concerning the SEC’s economic analysis. The court decisions—especially the D.C. Circuit’s 2011 decision in Business Roundtable v. SEC—took a much harder look at the Commission’s analysis than most legal commentators had expected. The upshot was that these decisions have created a quasi-natural experiment, providing researchers with ready-made case studies of the effects of judicial review on the quality and claimed use of economic analysis in regulations. The SEC’s 2012 guidance provides that a complete economic analysis should include an assessment of the agency’s need for the regulation, an articulation of the baseline against which the effects of the regulation would be measured, alternatives to the proposed regulation, an evaluation of the economic impact of the proposed regulation, and reasonable alternatives based on the regulation’s benefits and costs. These five factors, widely accepted as major elements of regulatory impact analysis, involve more than just the calculation of benefits and costs of a prospective regulation. All five of these factors are evaluated in the Regulatory Report Card project of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The Report Card’s evaluation rubric can be applied to assess the quality of the SEC’s economic analysis before and after the 2012 guidance was issued. As a preliminary matter, the Report Card includes two kinds of criteria for assessing the quality of the SEC’s economic analysis for a given regulation. Some criteria address the degree to which the analysis reflects a theoretical understanding and empirical evidence of cause-and-effect relationships. These criteria focus on, for example, how well the analysis identifies the nature and cause of a systemic problem that the regulation is intended to solve, the adequacy of the analysis’s assessment of alternative approaches, and whether the analysis identifies intended outcomes and shows how the proposed regulation would achieve these outcomes. Other criteria largely address the analysis’s quantification of benefits and costs, including how well the analysis addresses the baseline, the adequacy of the analysis’s identification of benefits and costs, and whether the analysis includes an assessment of uncertainties about the size of the problem, benefits, and costs. Because 130 economically significant, non-budget regulations proposed by executive branch agencies were evaluated for the Report Card project, it is also possible to compare the quality of the SEC’s analysis with the quality of analysis performed by these agencies. The chart below compares the average quality of analysis for four groups of regulations, based on the five criteria articulated in the SEC guidance: A score of one point on a criterion indicates that the analysis included some assertions on the criterion without providing much evidence for those assertions. A score of five points indicates a reasonably thorough analysis reflecting potential best practices. The post-guidance scores for SEC regulations increased significantly with respect to all five of the guidance’s criteria, relative to the pre-guidance scores. The SEC’s post-guidance scores are much closer to those of executive branch regulators—whether one considers the executive branch financial regulators exclusively, or all executive branch regulators. Econometric analysis, which statistically controls for other factors that might affect the results, confirms these results. The difference between SEC pre- and post-guidance analyses is statistically significant, after controlling for other factors that might explain the difference. In terms of the criteria measuring the analysis’s identification of the problem motivating the regulation, the baseline, and the costs, the SEC post-guidance analyses score similarly to the average executive branch analysis. The SEC analyses still score below the executive branch with respect to the analysis of alternatives and benefits. Whether one considers SEC economic analyses or regulatory impact analyses produced by executive branch agencies, there is still significant room for improvement. As the chart shows, for most criteria, the average score is slightly below three points. A score of three points indicates that the analysis includes a conceptual explanation and empirical evidence on some major points, but the fact remains that it is not a comprehensive analysis. Despite this drawback, the study contains good news regardless of whether one favors “conceptual” economic analysis or extensive quantification of benefits and costs. It also suggests that judicial review of agency economic analysis can create powerful incentives for agencies to improve
Improving Economic Analysis by Reorganizing Agencies’ Economists
No full textIt is a truism in management that organizational structure can affect results by altering information flows and incentives. The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recently retained me to produce a report that examines how the organization and management of economists in federal regulatory agencies can affect the quality and consideration of economic analysis that is intended to inform decisions about regulations. Based on the report, ACUS adopted a multi-part recommendation to help regulatory agencies assess how the organization and management of their economists can best promote objective analysis and effective communication of the results to decision-makers. Executive orders require executive branch agencies to conduct regulatory impact analyses to inform decisions about significant regulations. Some agencies not covered by these executive orders, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, produce similar economic analyses due to statutory requirements or because they believe such analyses provide helpful input for making their decisions. The organizational structure for economists responsible for producing economic analysis of regulations typically takes one of three forms: divisional organization, under which the economists are located in and supervised by the program office that develops the regulations; functional organization, under which the economists are located in an economic analysis office separate from the program office and supervised by other economists; or hybrid organization, under which the economists who conduct economic analysis of regulations are located in the program office, but additional economists are located in a central office that reviews regulations and accompanying analysis. The report I prepared for ACUS summarizes relevant organization theory, published interview research, case studies, and an econometric study finding that functional organization of economists is associated with higher-quality regulatory impact analyses. The report also includes the results of interviews I conducted with both economists and non-economists who work on regulations in six cabinet agencies and two independent agencies. Organization theory, previously published research, and the new interviews conducted for this study tell a consistent story about the advantages and disadvantages of the different organizational structures for economists who conduct regulatory analysis. Choosing an organizational structure often involves a tradeoff between the quality and objectivity of economic analysis, and the extent to which policymakers consider the economic analysis in their decisions. Decision-making authorities, operating procedures, and practices can be developed to mitigate the disadvantages of the chosen organizational structure. Functional organization of economists, for example, can improve the quality and consistency of economic analysis. This structure allows senior economists to exercise quality control over the analysts’ work, ensuring that economists are evaluated by other economists with the expertise to evaluate their work. It also facilitates the hiring of better economists, encourages the development of standardized analytical procedures, and better insulates economists from pressure to produce analysis that simply justifies decisions that have already been made. On the other hand, functional organization can lead to less relevant economic analysis because economists are no longer working side-by-side with the personnel in the program office who are writing the regulations. Regulation-writers and decision-makers may also find it easier to ignore economic analysis because the economists producing it are in a different part of the organization. The disadvantages of functional organization, however, can be mitigated by including economists on interdisciplinary regulatory development teams from the outset. This ensures that the economic analysis reaches the ultimate decision-makers. It also gives the chief economist or other head of the agency’s economic analysis office sign-off authority on regulations. Divisional organization avoids some of the disadvantages of functional organization. For example, placing economists in the program office that writes the regulations can promote more relevant analysis. Economists may be more conversant with key decisions that need to be made in developing regulations. Economists are also more likely to involve themselves in the early phases of regulatory development, before many decisions are made, if they are in the program office. Divisional organization, however, also has its costs. When an agency’s regulatory economists are spread across multiple divisional organizations, they may have fewer opportunities to collaborate with each other and develop analytical procedures that are shared across the entire agency. In addition, economists who ultimately report to non-economists in a program office may feel more pressure to produce analysis that justifies decisions made in the program office. Economists’ analysis and recommendations may not even reach higher-level decision-makers. These shortcomings of divisional organization can be mitigated with appropriate decision-making authorities, procedures, and practices. Some agencies ensure that economists in program offices are managed by other economists. Many departments with divisional organization also have a central economics office that reviews regulations and the accompanying analysis to provide a quality check, provides leadership in developing analytical procedures, and arranges for analytical research and development that serves as an input into analysis for future rulemakings. The head of the central economics office also typically has some degree of sign-off authority on a regulation or its associated economic analysis. In effect, many agencies try to reduce the disadvantages of divisional organization by becoming hybrid organizations, which means including economists in both the program office and a central office that reviews regulations. A hybrid organization is not perfect, however, because economics staff in program offices can still be marginalized or face career disincentives for communicating with the central economics office when they see shortcomings in the program office’s analysis. ACUS issued its multi-part recommendation based on these findings. Its recommendation consists of five actions agencies can take to assess and improve their organization of economics analysts. First, and most fundamentally, ACUS said that agencies that conduct economic analysis to inform regulatory decisions should consider whether their existing organizational structure for economists facilitates the production of objective, consistent, and high-quality analysis. Second, the recommendation urges agencies to consider a list of the strengths and weaknesses of each organizational structure when assessing how the current organizational structure affects the quality of analysis and the flow of that information to decision-makers. Third, ACUS urges agencies that are starting up new economic analysis units or restructuring their existing economic analysis functions to consider the same factors. Fourth, the recommendation lists the primary strategies that agencies can employ to mitigate the disadvantages of each organizational structure. Finally, ACUS’s recommendation highlights three practices that can be helpful regardless of organizational form: If agencies take the ACUS recommendation to heart, they can improve the economic analysis their staffs produce. Ultimately, adopting this recommendation should lead to higher quality and more efficient government regulation
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Improving Economic Analysis by Reorganizing Agencies’ Economists
No full textIt is a truism in management that organizational structure can affect results by altering information flows and incentives. The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recently retained me to produce a report that examines how the organization and management of economists in federal regulatory agencies can affect the quality and consideration of economic analysis that is intended to inform decisions about regulations. Based on the report, ACUS adopted a multi-part recommendation to help regulatory agencies assess how the organization and management of their economists can best promote objective analysis and effective communication of the results to decision-makers. Executive orders require executive branch agencies to conduct regulatory impact analyses to inform decisions about significant regulations. Some agencies not covered by these executive orders, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, produce similar economic analyses due to statutory requirements or because they believe such analyses provide helpful input for making their decisions. The organizational structure for economists responsible for producing economic analysis of regulations typically takes one of three forms: divisional organization, under which the economists are located in and supervised by the program office that develops the regulations; functional organization, under which the economists are located in an economic analysis office separate from the program office and supervised by other economists; or hybrid organization, under which the economists who conduct economic analysis of regulations are located in the program office, but additional economists are located in a central office that reviews regulations and accompanying analysis. The report I prepared for ACUS summarizes relevant organization theory, published interview research, case studies, and an econometric study finding that functional organization of economists is associated with higher-quality regulatory impact analyses. The report also includes the results of interviews I conducted with both economists and non-economists who work on regulations in six cabinet agencies and two independent agencies. Organization theory, previously published research, and the new interviews conducted for this study tell a consistent story about the advantages and disadvantages of the different organizational structures for economists who conduct regulatory analysis. Choosing an organizational structure often involves a tradeoff between the quality and objectivity of economic analysis, and the extent to which policymakers consider the economic analysis in their decisions. Decision-making authorities, operating procedures, and practices can be developed to mitigate the disadvantages of the chosen organizational structure. Functional organization of economists, for example, can improve the quality and consistency of economic analysis. This structure allows senior economists to exercise quality control over the analysts’ work, ensuring that economists are evaluated by other economists with the expertise to evaluate their work. It also facilitates the hiring of better economists, encourages the development of standardized analytical procedures, and better insulates economists from pressure to produce analysis that simply justifies decisions that have already been made. On the other hand, functional organization can lead to less relevant economic analysis because economists are no longer working side-by-side with the personnel in the program office who are writing the regulations. Regulation-writers and decision-makers may also find it easier to ignore economic analysis because the economists producing it are in a different part of the organization. The disadvantages of functional organization, however, can be mitigated by including economists on interdisciplinary regulatory development teams from the outset. This ensures that the economic analysis reaches the ultimate decision-makers. It also gives the chief economist or other head of the agency’s economic analysis office sign-off authority on regulations. Divisional organization avoids some of the disadvantages of functional organization. For example, placing economists in the program office that writes the regulations can promote more relevant analysis. Economists may be more conversant with key decisions that need to be made in developing regulations. Economists are also more likely to involve themselves in the early phases of regulatory development, before many decisions are made, if they are in the program office. Divisional organization, however, also has its costs. When an agency’s regulatory economists are spread across multiple divisional organizations, they may have fewer opportunities to collaborate with each other and develop analytical procedures that are shared across the entire agency. In addition, economists who ultimately report to non-economists in a program office may feel more pressure to produce analysis that justifies decisions made in the program office. Economists’ analysis and recommendations may not even reach higher-level decision-makers. These shortcomings of divisional organization can be mitigated with appropriate decision-making authorities, procedures, and practices. Some agencies ensure that economists in program offices are managed by other economists. Many departments with divisional organization also have a central economics office that reviews regulations and the accompanying analysis to provide a quality check, provides leadership in developing analytical procedures, and arranges for analytical research and development that serves as an input into analysis for future rulemakings. The head of the central economics office also typically has some degree of sign-off authority on a regulation or its associated economic analysis. In effect, many agencies try to reduce the disadvantages of divisional organization by becoming hybrid organizations, which means including economists in both the program office and a central office that reviews regulations. A hybrid organization is not perfect, however, because economics staff in program offices can still be marginalized or face career disincentives for communicating with the central economics office when they see shortcomings in the program office’s analysis. ACUS issued its multi-part recommendation based on these findings. Its recommendation consists of five actions agencies can take to assess and improve their organization of economics analysts. First, and most fundamentally, ACUS said that agencies that conduct economic analysis to inform regulatory decisions should consider whether their existing organizational structure for economists facilitates the production of objective, consistent, and high-quality analysis. Second, the recommendation urges agencies to consider a list of the strengths and weaknesses of each organizational structure when assessing how the current organizational structure affects the quality of analysis and the flow of that information to decision-makers. Third, ACUS urges agencies that are starting up new economic analysis units or restructuring their existing economic analysis functions to consider the same factors. Fourth, the recommendation lists the primary strategies that agencies can employ to mitigate the disadvantages of each organizational structure. Finally, ACUS’s recommendation highlights three practices that can be helpful regardless of organizational form: If agencies take the ACUS recommendation to heart, they can improve the economic analysis their staffs produce. Ultimately, adopting this recommendation should lead to higher quality and more efficient government regulation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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