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Valuing Life: Humanizing the Regulatory State
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is the United States’s regulatory overseer. In Valuing Life , Cass R. Sunstein draws on his firsthand experience as the Administrator of OIRA from 2009 to 2012 to argue that we can humanize regulation―and save lives in the process.
As OIRA Administrator, Sunstein helped oversee regulation in a broad variety of areas, including highway safety, health care, homeland security, immigration, energy, environmental protection, and education. This background allows him to describe OIRA and how it works―and how it can work better―from an on-the-ground perspective. Using real-world examples, many of them drawn from today’s headlines, Sunstein makes a compelling case for improving cost-benefit analysis, a longtime cornerstone of regulatory decision-making, and for taking account of variables that are hard to quantify, such as dignity and personal privacy. He also shows how regulatory decisions about health, safety, and life itself can benefit from taking into account behavioral and psychological research, including new findings about what scares us, and what does not. By better accounting for people’s fallibility, Sunstein argues, we can create regulation that is simultaneously more human and more likely to achieve its goals.
In this highly readable synthesis of insights from law, policy, economics, and psychology, Sunstein breaks down the intricacies of the regulatory system and offers a new way of thinking about regulation that incorporates human dignity– and an insistent focus on the consequences of our choices.
As OIRA Administrator, Sunstein helped oversee regulation in a broad variety of areas, including highway safety, health care, homeland security, immigration, energy, environmental protection, and education. This background allows him to describe OIRA and how it works―and how it can work better―from an on-the-ground perspective. Using real-world examples, many of them drawn from today’s headlines, Sunstein makes a compelling case for improving cost-benefit analysis, a longtime cornerstone of regulatory decision-making, and for taking account of variables that are hard to quantify, such as dignity and personal privacy. He also shows how regulatory decisions about health, safety, and life itself can benefit from taking into account behavioral and psychological research, including new findings about what scares us, and what does not. By better accounting for people’s fallibility, Sunstein argues, we can create regulation that is simultaneously more human and more likely to achieve its goals.
In this highly readable synthesis of insights from law, policy, economics, and psychology, Sunstein breaks down the intricacies of the regulatory system and offers a new way of thinking about regulation that incorporates human dignity– and an insistent focus on the consequences of our choices.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Cass R. Sunstein
176 books754 followersCass R. Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. For 27 years, Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. Sunstein is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is on leave while working in the Obama administration.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 31, 2020
Government regulation is a widely and wildly misunderstood construct. Sunstein is the world's leading expert on the matter and concisely and thought-provokingly explains how regulation works and should work. This book couples that expertise with important considerations of human behavior and preferences.
December 22, 2014
See my review at http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/...
June 29, 2017
Sunstein served as head of OIRA (Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs) under Obama & therefore was in charge of the government's attempt to rationalize & optimize the crafting of regulations. Starts out pretty dry with detailed explanations of cost-benefit & break-even analysis techniques. Then gets more interesting with methods for valuing human lives. Demonstrates flaws in market-based systems. Argues that regulations may often be justified and desirable even when non-economic or non-monetizable. This is a very interesting exposition of bring philosophical issues such as those of Amartya Sen to very practical applications.
January 29, 2021
OIRA is both extremely fascinating and extremely boring at the same time.
January 3, 2016
Boring. Felt like a textbook or manual more than anything else.
In the world of (US) regulation, politics and interest group pressure usually do not play a significant role in the regulatory process.
Good internal processes are immensely important, because they increase the likelyhood that people will focus on what matters and get things right. Obtaining widely dispersed information is also important.
When rulings are delayed it is usually because significant interagency concerns have yet to be addressed.
the sheer number of meetings is quite uninformative. some have no effect at all because no new information is presented. Sometimes presenters speak in vague and general terms and thus offer nothing new. If presenters offer arguments that are significant it is overwhelmingly likely that they are already in public comments and thus already well known.
Presenters offering support or scepticism do not have any impact on actual decisions. (unconstructive feedback)
The most useful meetings are specific. They might emphasise potential unintended consequences, legal difficulties, or international trade implications - and suggest a concrete way of handling the relevant problems.
Cost-benefit analysis should weigh by net benefits, not cost-benefit ratios.
The Value of A Statistical Life (VSL, i.e. how much a human life is valued) should be risk-specific, it should not be the same across statistically equivalent risks.
If a low willingness to pay (WTP) arises from a failure to give adequate attention to the future, then there is reason not to use WTP (when determined whether or not to go ahead with regulation)
Apparently people are willing to incur greater risks from the very harm they seek protection from to avoid the mere possibility of betrayal (e.g. being killed by an airbag)
Some of the most important cognitive biases disappear when using a foreign language, since the unfamiliarity of the language prevents the system 1 mind (shortcuts and heuristics) from taking over.
In the world of (US) regulation, politics and interest group pressure usually do not play a significant role in the regulatory process.
Good internal processes are immensely important, because they increase the likelyhood that people will focus on what matters and get things right. Obtaining widely dispersed information is also important.
When rulings are delayed it is usually because significant interagency concerns have yet to be addressed.
the sheer number of meetings is quite uninformative. some have no effect at all because no new information is presented. Sometimes presenters speak in vague and general terms and thus offer nothing new. If presenters offer arguments that are significant it is overwhelmingly likely that they are already in public comments and thus already well known.
Presenters offering support or scepticism do not have any impact on actual decisions. (unconstructive feedback)
The most useful meetings are specific. They might emphasise potential unintended consequences, legal difficulties, or international trade implications - and suggest a concrete way of handling the relevant problems.
Cost-benefit analysis should weigh by net benefits, not cost-benefit ratios.
The Value of A Statistical Life (VSL, i.e. how much a human life is valued) should be risk-specific, it should not be the same across statistically equivalent risks.
If a low willingness to pay (WTP) arises from a failure to give adequate attention to the future, then there is reason not to use WTP (when determined whether or not to go ahead with regulation)
Apparently people are willing to incur greater risks from the very harm they seek protection from to avoid the mere possibility of betrayal (e.g. being killed by an airbag)
Some of the most important cognitive biases disappear when using a foreign language, since the unfamiliarity of the language prevents the system 1 mind (shortcuts and heuristics) from taking over.
February 3, 2015
Drawing on his experience at OIRA (office of information and regulatory affairs), Sunstein describes benefit-cost analyses for new regulation. With special focus on how to value a life. Value of Statistical Life (VSL) commonly used is $9 million.
Predictable deviations from rationality are also discussed, like our inability to accurately judge low probabilities or betrayal aversion. Interesting, but not very new. Book is a collection/draws heavily on law journal-articles.
Also, executive order 13653 (which also is Appendix A) is just not that interesting. His earlier book "Nudge" is a classic, do read that. "Simpler" is readable (almost anything Sunstein writes, which is a lot, is readable), but suffers the same flaw as "Valuing Life": a mix of memoirs, regulation and behavioral economics do not necessarily merit (or make) a whole book.
Predictable deviations from rationality are also discussed, like our inability to accurately judge low probabilities or betrayal aversion. Interesting, but not very new. Book is a collection/draws heavily on law journal-articles.
Also, executive order 13653 (which also is Appendix A) is just not that interesting. His earlier book "Nudge" is a classic, do read that. "Simpler" is readable (almost anything Sunstein writes, which is a lot, is readable), but suffers the same flaw as "Valuing Life": a mix of memoirs, regulation and behavioral economics do not necessarily merit (or make) a whole book.
June 15, 2015
Although at times repetitive, this book provides a great synopsis of the behavioral psychology and microeconomic motivations behind government regulation.
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April 24, 2015306.20973 S9588 2014
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews