Separating economic from political influences on government decisions

Economies of Scope in Endangered-Species Protection: Evidence from Interest-Group Behavior

“…The ESA calls for the administering agencies 5 to maintain a list of endangered and threatened species. The agencies are directed by the law to use scientific evidence of endangerment alone in deciding which species to put on the list; economic considerations are not supposed to play a role in the listing process.…”

“…That sort of strategic interaction is incorporated, for example, into Crone and Tschirhart's [5] analysis of interest-group influence on National Forest Service decisions.…”

Sources of Bureaucratic Delay: A Case Study of FERC Dam Relicensing

“…In empirical analyses of drug approval times by the FDA, for example, Dranove and Meltzer (1994) and Olson (1997Olson ( , 2000 both found that the speed of drugs through the regulatory process is significantly affected by the ''importance'' of the drug. Other studies, not on regulatory processing times but on final regulatory outcomes, by Magat et al (1986), Bartel and Thomas (1987), Cropper et al (1992), Olson (1995Olson ( , 1997Olson ( , 2000, Mixon (1994), Crone and Tschirhart (1998), and Ando (2001), confirm that case-specific variables are generally significant in affecting regulatory decisions. This analysis includes a host of case-specific variables, including size of the dam being relicensed, environmental quality of the river upon which the dam is being relicensed, and value of the electricity generated by the dam in order to determine these alternative workload factors which of may affect regulatory delay.…”

“…2 In the context of hydroelectric dam relicensing, timing has indeed become an increasingly variable factor of the process. A quick look at the hydroelectric licenses issued by FERC between 1982 and1998 shows that 27% of all licenses took longer to issue than the scheduled five years, 3 with the longest license taking over 21 years to complete (Table 1). 4 This trend has grown in recent years, with later applications languishing longer.…”

Balancing Environmental Protection and Energy Production in the Federal Hydropower Licensing Process

“…An early assumption, which in recent years has made something of a comeback, was that regulators sought to maximize the public welfare, and in issuing regulatory decisions had the independence and discretion to pursue a "public-interestdriven" policy. Today this assumption by itself appears naive, but as at least a component of regulatory agency decision making (Crone and Tschirhart 1998;Nowell and Tschirhart 1993). ideology and discretion have been found in many studies to have empirical support.…”