Costs of Regulation

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the costs of federal regulations, focusing on one economist's estimates of the costs of environmental, economic, and certain social regulations. GAO noted that: (1) there is disagreement on whether process and transfer costs should be included in estimates of regulatory costs; (2) excluding these costs will decrease cost estimates by more than one-half; and (3) the percentage of gross domestic product devoted to regulatory costs was 4.6 percent in 1977, 3.6 percent in 1990, and 4.1 percent in 1994.