Abstract The American administrative state has become a cost-benefit state, at least in the sense that prevailing executive orders require agencies to proceed only if the benefits justify the costs. Some people celebrate this development; others abhor it. For defenders of the cost-benefit state, the antonym of their ideal is, alternately, regulation based on dogmas, intuitions, pure expressivism, political preferences, or interest-group power. Seen most sympathetically, the focus on costs and benefits is a neo-Benthamite effort to attend to the real-world consequences of regulations, and it casts a pragmatic, skeptical light on modern objections to the administrative state, invoking public-choice theory and the supposedly self-serving decisions of unelected bureaucrats. The focus on costs and benefits is also a valuable effort to go beyond coarse arguments, from both the right and the left, that tend to ask this unhelpful question: “Which side are you on?” In the future, however, there will be much better ways, which we might consider neo-Millian, to identify those consequences: 1) by relying less on speculative ex ante projections and more on actual evaluations; 2) by focusing directly on welfare and not relying on imperfect proxies; and 3) by attending closely to distributional considerations–on who is helped and who is hurt.

中文翻译：

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成本收益分析的一些成本和收益

摘要 美国的行政国家已经成为一个成本效益国家，至少在现行行政命令要求机构只有在收益证明成本合理的情况下才能进行的意义上。有些人庆祝这一发展；其他人厌恶它。对于成本效益国家的捍卫者来说，他们理想的反义词是基于教条、直觉、纯粹表现主义、政治偏好或利益集团权力的监管。从最令人同情的角度来看，对成本和收益的关注是一种新边沁式的努力，以关注法规在现实世界中的后果，它对现代反对行政国家的反对意见投下了务实的、怀疑的光，援引公共选择理论和据说是非民选官僚自私自利的决定。关注成本和收益也是一种有价值的努力，它超越了左右两边的粗略争论，这些争论往往会问这个无益的问题：“你站在哪一边？” 然而，在未来，将会有更好的方法，我们可能会考虑新米利安，以识别这些后果：1）减少对投机性事前预测的依赖，更多地依赖实际评估；2）直接关注福利而不依赖不完善的代理；3) 通过密切关注分配方面的考虑——谁得到了帮助，谁受到了伤害。1) 减少对投机性事前预测的依赖，而更多地依赖实际评估；2）直接关注福利而不依赖不完善的代理；3) 通过密切关注分配方面的考虑——谁得到了帮助，谁受到了伤害。1) 减少对投机性事前预测的依赖，而更多地依赖实际评估；2）直接关注福利而不依赖不完善的代理；3) 通过密切关注分配方面的考虑——谁得到了帮助，谁受到了伤害。