But the lesson in the arsenic story is neither tricky nor boring. Expensive regulation can boost risks rather than reducing them, and government agencies such as the EPA are not always alive to this prospect. In another recent paper that Hahn did with Randall Lutter of the American Enterprise Institute and Kip Viscusi of Harvard, half the regulations examined have the unintended effect of increasing the mortality risk they seek to lessen. But as a matter of policy, it is extraordinary to suggest that regulatory targets should be set without taking costs into account. Nobody would argue that the normal budget should be written without weighing costs at every step.
Regulation ought to be no different.
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