Stuart Shapiro is Dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

Stuart Shapiro, Counting Regulations and Measuring Regulatory Impact: A Call for Nuance, Monday, November 4^th 2024, 15.00 CET; 14.00 London Time; 16.00 Jerusalem Time; 9.00 Eastern Time.

The effect of regulation on virtually every aspect of the lives of US citizens has led to an understandable impulse to measure this total impact. It has led to various attempts to count the total number of regulations and regulatory requirements, and to total the costs and benefits of regulation. These counting mechanisms have played prominent roles in discussions over statutory changes designed to reform the process by which we write regulations. But counting regulations in a meaningful way and measuring their cumulative economic impact is an astonishingly difficult task. Various methods have been employed by scholars and advocates in this effort. This article is an attempt to catalog the most prominent methods of counting regulations and measuring regulatory impact in the United States, describe their strengths and weaknesses, and to suggest alternative approaches to attack this important question.  We suggest both using large language models and detailed analysis of Paperwork Reduction Act data and, at the opposite extreme, doing more qualitative work on the consequences of regulation on individuals, firms, and industries.

Xavier Fernández-i-Marín is a “Ramón y Cajal” fellow at the Universitat de Barcelona.

Xavier Fernández-i-Marín, The Visualization of Policy Portfolios: Challenges, Opportunities and Applications, Thursday, October 9^th 2024, 13.00 CET; 12.00 London Time; 14.00 Jerusalem Time; 7.00 Eastern Time.

This webinar explores the possibilities of a visualization of “policy portfolios” for political science and general and comparative public policy in particular. There are different types of ideas that a policy portfolio can describe: policy accumulation, complexity/ diversity, convergence and/or style. All this can be studied comparatively across countries, over time, in different policy levels (EU, national, subnational and local). This webinar cover examples ranging from social and environmental policies to climate change policies and even Artificial Intelligence policies, showing the potential of the tool. It also provides some gentle introduction to the R package “PolicyPortfolios”.