failure it may be sufficient for government to establish a standardized testing and rating system without mandating its use, because competing firms that score well according to the system should thereby have an incentive to publicize the fact.

Both benefit-cost analysis (BCA) and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) provide a systematic framework for identifying and evaluating the likely outcomes of alternative regulatory choices. A major rulemaking should be supported by both types of analysis wherever possible. Specifically, you should prepare a CEA for all major rulemakings for which the primary benefits are improved public health and safety to the extent that a valid effectiveness measure can be developed to represent expected health and safety outcomes. You should also perform a BCA for major health and safety rulemakings to the extent that valid monetary values can be assigned to the primary expected health and safety outcomes. In undertaking these analyses, it is important to keep in mind the larger objective of analytical consistency in estimating benefits and costs across regulations and agencies, subject to statutory limitations. Failure to maintain such consistency may prevent achievement of the most risk reduction for a given level of resource expenditure. For all other major rulemakings, you should carry out a BCA. If some of the primary benefit categories cannot be expressed in monetary units, you should also conduct a CEA. In unusual cases where no quantified information on benefits, costs and effectiveness can be produced, the regulatory analysis should present a qualitative discussion of the issues and evidence.

A distinctive feature of BCA is that both benefits and costs are expressed in monetary units, which allows you to evaluate different regulatory options with a variety of attributes using a common measure.⁴ By measuring incremental benefits and costs of successively more stringent regulatory alternatives, you can identify the alternative that maximizes net benefits.

The size of net benefits, the absolute difference between the projected benefits and costs, indicates whether one policy is more efficient than another. The ratio of benefits to costs is not a meaningful indicator of net