The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of Management and Budget has released its updated guidance designed to help government agencies analyze the impacts of their regulatory actions using the latest economic and scientific advances and knowledge.
The revised governmentwide Circular A-4 was issued in accordance with an executive order signed in April to modernize the U.S. regulatory review system, the White House said Thursday.
The updated Circular A-4 contains revisions related to discounting, distributional analysis, the spatial scope of analysis and non-monetized effects.
According to OIRA, the revised guidance document seeks to enable agencies to determine the distributional effects of regulations and recognize the importance of distributional analysis in improving estimates of a regulation’s costs and benefits.
OIRA noted that the updated circular marks its commitment to “ensuring that benefit-cost analysis keeps pace with the best understanding of economics and science.”
