The Cost-Benefit Revolution

About this book

Why policies should be based on careful consideration of their costs and benefits rather than on intuition popular opinion interest groups and anecdotes. Opinions on government policies vary widely. Some people feel passionately about the child obesity epidemic and support government regulation of sugary drinks. Others argue that people should be able to eat and drink whatever they like. Some people are alarmed about climate change and favor aggressive government intervention. Others dont feel the need for any sort of climate regulation. In The Cost-Benefit Revolution Cass Sunstein argues our major disagreements really involve facts not values. It follows that government policy should not be based on public opinion intuitions or pressure from interest groups but on numbersmeaning careful consideration of costs and benefits. Will a policy save one life or one thousand lives? Will it impose costs on consumers and if so will the costs be high or negligible? Will it hurt workers and small businesses and if so precisely how much? As the Obama administrations regulatory czar Sunstein knows his subject in both theory and practice. Drawing on behavioral economics and his well-known emphasis on nudging he celebrates the cost-benefit revolution in policy making tracing its defining moments in the Reagan Clinton and Obama administrations (and pondering its uncertain future in the Trump administration). He acknowledges that public officials often lack information about costs and benefits and outlines state-of-the-art techniques for acquiring that information. Policies should make peoples lives better. Quantitative cost-benefit analysis Sunstein argues is the best available method for making this happeneven if in the future new measures of human well-being also explored in this book may be better still.