Guidance Is Not Enough: U.S. Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis”

Under President Clinton’s Executive Order 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” U.S. federal agencies have been required to assess the costs, benefits, and other impacts of their major regulations since 1993. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in the Executive Office of the President, is responsible for overseeing this process and issuing related guidance. Under the Biden Administration, in April 2023 OMB issued a draft update of its 2003 Circular A-4 best-practice guidance and requested public comment. That update was finalized in November 2023, then rescinded by the Trump Administration in January 2025. This special issue of the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis provides reflections on the revisions of that guidance from past Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis presidents and Journal editors. Although I address several substantive issues in my comments and other work, barriers to implementation of best practices remain a major concern. Most of those who commented on the proposed revisions focused largely on the words on the page rather than on the work needed to implement them. Yet one of the most important sentences in both original and revised Circulars reads: “You will find that you cannot conduct a good regulatory analysis according to a formula. Conducting high-quality analysis requires competent professional judgment…” The challenge is supporting the development of this judgment, and ensuring that analysts have the data and resources necessary to conduct high-quality analyses that are useful for decision-making.