Article

Against Feasibility Analysis

Jonathan S. Masur

Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

Eric A. Posner

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

Thanks to Emily Buss, Dan Cole, Adam Cox, David Driesen, Frank Easterbrook, Jake Gersen, Martha Nussbaum, Arden Rowell, Adam Samaha, Tom Ulen, Adrian Vermeule, Sasha Volokh, David Weisbach, and participants at a workshop at The University of Chicago Law School for helpful comments, and to Charles Woodworth for excellent research assistance.

Feasibility analysis, a method of evaluating government regulations, has emerged as the major alternative to cost-benefit analysis. Although regulatory agencies have used feasibility analysis (in some contexts called “technology-based” analysis) longer than cost-benefit analysis, feasibility analysis has received far less attention in the scholarly literature. In recent years, however, critics of cost-benefit analysis have offered feasibility analysis as a superior alternative. We advance the debate by uncovering the analytic structure of feasibility analysis and its normative premises, and then criticizing them. Our account builds on two examples of feasibility analysis, one conducted by OSHA and the other by EPA. We find that feasibility analysis leads to both under- and overregulation, and we conclude that it lacks a normative justification and should have no place in government regulation.

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