Does OIRA Review Improve the Quality of Regulatory Impact Analysis? Evidence from the Final Year of the Bush II Administration

Since 1974, executive orders have required executive branch regulatory agencies to produce some form of economic analysis when promulgating significant regulations. However, both case study research and regulatory analysis “scorecards” find that the quality of regulatory analysis varies considerably across and within agencies. Executive Order 12,866 gives the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) authority to review agency regulations and the accompanying analysis, and OIRA can return regulations to agencies if the analysis is insufficient. Using data from the Mercatus Center's Regulatory Report Card project and statistics on OIRA review time from reginfo.gov, we examine whether the quality and use of regulatory analysis vary consistently with OIRA actions. Our findings suggest that there is a critical relationship between political pressure, and deadlines, and the quality of regulatory analysis that warrants further investigation