Although benefit assessment principles are well established for specific populations, very little attention has been paid to how to define the scope of the pertinent population for such assessments. Whose social welfare matters and whose benefits should be included in the assessment? In the case...

This article provided an overview of the costs and benefits of regulating mercury emissions from power plants using IQ gains as a measure of benefits. Our assessment suggests strongly that the benefits are not likely to be worth the costs. This is true both for the command-and-control regulatory...