Regulatory Trade-Offs and Outcomes

Abstract

To assert that environmental and health regulation have become extremely rigorous in the European Union (EU) during the past decade while they have languished in the United States would be to oversimplify contrasting but variegated regulatory trajectories. Regulation in the areas of chemicals, health claims, and recycling of end-of-life autos in Europe has become harmonized at the EU level and reflects a serious commitment to reducing dangers to the environment and public health, but intensification of regulatory rigor has been attenuated by effective introduction into the policy process of a desire to limit the cost burden on industry. In the United States, efforts by some policy makers to initiate more restrictive regulation of chemicals have been preempted by voluntary programs sponsored by industry; a long history of rigorous regulation of health claims on food labels has been transcended by court decisions expanding the free exercise of commercial speech; and systematic recycling of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) is confined to a few state laws governing portions of the recovery and recycling process, coupled with narrowly targeted voluntary industry agreements.