Austan Goolsbee Quotes

Is regulation per se bad? Is better regulation bad? I think better regulation is good for the business community, and I think that's something we should get together on.

That is, while we believe that cost-benefit analysis is an important tool to inform agency decision making, the results of the cost-benefit analysis do not trump existing law.

In recent years, Republicans have argued that Congress is a more responsible policymaker than the executive branch. But when it comes to regulation, Congress is often much worse, and for just one reason: Executive agencies almost always focus on both costs and benefits, and Congress usually doesn't.

As presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have recognized, the real question is whether regulations, whether new or old, are justified. That requires a careful analysis of their costs and their benefits.

A focus on regulatory overreach, things that the benefit doesn't outweigh the cost, is probably the single greatest opportunity we have for having a positive impact on job creation.

Road testing the effects of regulation on European business must become second nature to the European Union.

If you think that government regulators are going to outwit the market, you've got a Jurassic Park fantasy.

Repealing rules therefore requires federal agencies to explain why the factual and scientific bases for the predicted benefits of their rules were wrong or no longer adequate to justify those rules.

There is certainly a role for regulation, but regulation should always take into account the impact that it has on markets, a balance that must be constantly weighed.

I've always been a ... believer in good regulation.

There is a very real danger that financial regulation will become a wolf in sheep's clothing.

At the end of the day, though, there are a huge number of considerations that our management team go through before accepting any project - checking out the license is just one of them.

The reality is regulation often lags behind innovation.

You don't make a system more effective by increasing the number of regulators.

All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.

The constant need for special waivers is symptomatic of poorly written public policy. It's a signal that the cost of compliance is unreasonably high; the benefits are hard to measure; and either legislators or regulators have failed to do their homework.

Here in the UK the government has decided to accept the recommendations of the Better Regulation Task Force to measure and make targeted reductions in the administrative costs - the red tape costs - that regulations impose on business.

Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999.

Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

Now in business we do a cost benefit analysis before we make policy changes. Washington should as well.

Banking, I would argue, is the most heavily regulated industry in the world. Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things.

Sometimes regulators are the most reactionary people and are looking backward.

When an industry has a blanket exemption and someone suggests the most modest regulation, they see it changing the universe in which they do business.

The railroads saw that they must either accept control by the State of control the State.