My own judgement is that modest efforts to assess levels of benefits and costs are justified, although I do not believe that government agencies ough… - Steven Kelman

" "

My own judgement is that modest efforts to assess levels of benefits and costs are justified, although I do not believe that government agencies ought to sponsor efforts to put dollar prices on non-market things. I also do not believe that the cry for more cost-benefit analysis in regulation is, on the whole, justified. If regulatory officials were so insensitive about regulatory costs that they did not provide acceptable raw material for deliberative judgments (even if not of a strictly cost-benefit nature), my conclusion might be different. But a good deal of research into costs and benefits already occurs-actually, far more in the U.S. regulatory process than in that of any other industrial society. The danger now would seem to come more from the other side.