Delegation and the Regulation of Risk

Political principals typically use low-cost "fire-alarm" signals transmitted by the media, interest groups, and disaffected constituents to monitor the activities of regulatory agencies. We argue that regulatory decision-making is biased and inconsistent if the instruments of political oversight are simple and the information flows to the principal are coarse relative to the complexity of the regulatory environment.

[1]  Susanne Lohmann,et al.  A Signaling Model of Informative and Manipulative Political Action , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[2]  Thomas Schwartz,et al.  Congressional Oversight Over-looked: Police Patrol versus Fire Alarms , 1984 .

[3]  C. Fershtman,et al.  Observable Contracts: Strategic Delegation and Cooperation , 1991 .

[4]  Fire-Alarm Signals and the Political Oversight of Regulatory Agencies , 1996 .

[5]  Kenneth Rogoff,et al.  The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target''Quarterly Journal of Economics , 1985 .

[6]  Dilip Mookherjee,et al.  Delegation as Commitment: The Case of Income Tax Audits , 1989 .

[7]  J. Banks,et al.  Adverse Selection and Moral hazard in a Repeated Elections Models , 1991 .

[8]  Elizabeth C. Hirschman,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[9]  John R. Wright,et al.  Competitive lobbying for a legislator's vote , 1992 .

[10]  Baruch Fischhoff,et al.  Regulation of risk: A psychological perspective , 1985 .

[11]  Roger G. Noll,et al.  Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control , 1987 .

[12]  S. Shackley.  But is it true? A citizen's guide to environmental health and safety issues - Wildavsky,A , 1996 .

[13]  A. Lupia.  Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections , 1994, American Political Science Review.

[14]  Roger G. Noll,et al.  STRUCTURE AND PROCESS, POLITICS AND POLICY: ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS AND THE POLITICAL CONTROL OF AGENCIES , 1989 .

[15]  E. Prescott,et al.  ADVERSE SELECTION AND MORAL HAZARD , 1984 .

[16]  A. Lupia.  Busy Voters, Agenda Control, and the Power of Information , 1992, American Political Science Review.

[17]  Aaron Wildavsky,et al.  But is it true? : a citizen's guide to environmental health and safety issues , 1997 .

[18]  H. J. Dunster.  Regulation of risk , 1981, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

[19]  Donald A. Berry,et al.  Bandit Problems: Sequential Allocation of Experiments. , 1986 .

[20]  W. Viscusi.  Fatal Tradeoffs: Public and Private Responsibilities for Risk , 1992 .

[21]  Jean Tirole,et al.  The internal organization of government , 1994 .

[22]  Roger G. Noll,et al.  Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences , 2023 .