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Regulation Winter 2025-2026 Cover

Winter 2025–2026

Vol. 48 No. 4
From the Cover

Just Say Nudge

By Jim Leitzel

Discouraging drug use and promoting more careful consumption would be better than the current prohibition.

Comment

By Jeffrey Miron and Jonah Karafiol

We agree that a legalized, “nudged” regime would, subject to the caveats below, be far better than prohibition. But such a regime would accrue its benefits in large part from legalization, and to a significantly lesser degree from any nudging.

Behind the Issue

Unintended Consequences

The Podcast of Regulation
In This Episode

Economists use something called the “social cost of carbon” to estimate the future physical and economic damages caused by climate change. Yet the final dollar cost assigned to carbon emissions fluctuates wildly: from roughly $7 under Trump to $190 under Biden! In this episode, Paul and Peter discuss the article “How Should We Value the Future?” (by Peter and David Kemp), how these numbers are generated, and how it’s not purely a product of scientific calculation but rather a profound ethical choice about intergenerational stewardship mediated by the political process.

Features

‘New Right’ Antitrust

By Thomas A. Lambert

After bemoaning the politicization of antitrust during the Biden administration, Trump officials are now politicizing it themselves.

Cutting the Sludge

Deregulation Based on Good Sludge

By Thomas J. Kniesner and W. Kip Viscusi

The economic criteria that are appropriate for deregulation parallel the tests that should be applied before enacting regulations in the first place.

Regulatory Gatekeepers and Their Sludge

By John D. Graham and Keith B. Belton

One little-known provision in the regulatory arcana is that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is not allowed to review the work of these gatekeepers.

The Administrative Procedure Act’s Missing Element

By Ronald Bird

This contemporary critique of the modern American administrative state is an implicit benefit–cost analysis that mirrors the one that Thomas Jefferson expressed in the Declaration of Independence: “The costs of colonial loyalty to the established British governing order exceed the benefits.”

Briefly Noted
The States Remain the AI Regulatory Leader
By Thomas A. Hemphill

With no federal legislation regulating AI technologies, state legislatures are making their own efforts to advance data privacy and security in AI tools.

In Review
Final Word
Coercion and Violence
By A. Barton Hinkle

Even when a majority supports a justifiable policy, some people are going to oppose it.