Cognitive psychology and optimal government design.(administrative law)

Cornell Law Review, January, 2002 by Farina, Cynthia R.; Rachlinski, Jeffrey J.

INTRODUCTION

Good government must avoid bad decisions. Because contemporary governments tend to undertake an ambitious range of social and economic regulation, they can do tremendous damage by adopting wasteful programs. Even casual observation reveals that some political systems avoid improvident public policy choices more effectively than others. Identifying institutional structures and processes that chronically produce bad decisions would both help explain why some regulatory regimes succeed where others fail, and illuminate useful reforms.

Over the last twenty years, the contemporary American administrative state has become acutely self-conscious about the nature and extent of governmental policy failure. Commentators both in the academy and in...

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