Alternatives to cost-benefit analysis in regulatory decisions.

* There are important differences between economic regulation and environmental, health, or safety regulation that must not be overlooked. * Costs are easier to express than benefits, but their quantifiability makes them no more certain or reliable. * Benefits include improved quality of life and good health as well as positive economic side-effects, but they defy accurate estimation and their recipients are not a well-organized lobbying group. * The comparison of costs and benefits is beset by serious methodological difficulties and requires the analyst to make value-laden assumptions; yet cost-benefit analysis appears, deceptively, to be a neutral technique. * Insistence on cost-benefit decision rules and other regulatory "reform" efforts may be undemocratic attempts to reorient legislative mandates.