Retaking Rationality : How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health

Written in a clear and non-technical manner, Retaking Rationality gives progressive groups and the public the tools they need both to understand and to engage in the debate over the economic analysis of environmental, public health, and safety regulation. Since the Reagan presidency, the most important regulations affecting every American have been required to pass a "cost-benefit" test, but most Americans-including many professionals working for progressive institutions or elected officials-do not understand how economic analysis works. The result is that industry and conservative ideologues have twisted economic analysis so that good regulations seem to fail the cost-benefit test. This book argues that the public, and progressive institutions, must take up the fight over how economic analysis is conducted, and gives them the knowledge they need to engage industry and conservatives about when and how economic analysis of regulation should be carried out.