The Book on Jobs: Regulation and the Search for a Unified Theory

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 233-236

233

The Book on Jobs:

Regulation and the Search

for a Unified Theory

By G. Tracy Mehan III

Does Regulation K ill Jobs? , edited by Cary Coglianese , Adam M.

Finkel, and Christopher Carriga n. University of Pennsylvania Press . 290

pages.

From the November/ December 2014 issue of The Environmenta l Forum.

The clear majority view of the con-

tributors, mostly economists and a

few lawyers, to this substantive book

on regulation and employment eects is this:

ere is little empirical evidence for claims of

signicant layos or growt h in green jobs, say

from ru les promulgated under the Clea n Air

Act to take just one prominent example. How-

ever, there is greater uncertainty among them

on the question of whether or not employment

eects, positive and negative, should be fac-

tored into regulatory benet-cost analysis, or

BCA, when such calculations might tip the

balance for or against the regulation or com-

pel substantial revisions. is debate is of some

moment given the lingering hangover from

the Great Recession, globalization, and shrinking incomes.

In Does Regulation Kill Jobs? editors Cary Coglianese, Adam Finkel, and

Christopher Carrigan, all well-regarded experts in the elds of BCA and

quantitative risk assessment, assemble an impressive c adre of 22 academic

and other researchers to work th rough the pros, cons, and outstanding

questions relat ing to the role that job loss or creation should have in reg ula-

tory decisionmak ing. In t he real world, regulators track job impacts. Yet,