Improving Cost-Benefit Analysis of Tobacco Regulation

描述（由申请人提供）：2010年11月，美国食品和药物管理局（FDA）在其十多年来首次对烟草进行监管的重大尝试中，提出了要求在卷烟包装上贴上图形警告标签的法规。与所有主要规则一样，这一规则附有法律要求的监管影响分析，列举了规则的成本和收益。毫不奇怪，这一规定立即遭到烟草业的反对，包括对FDA用于评估与吸烟减少相关的消费者剩余损失（即吸烟者放弃的享受）的方法的尖锐批评。在2011年8月发布的最终规则的分析中，FDA使用了一种折衷方法来评估消费者剩余损失，并估计这将抵消与该法规相关的吸烟者健康益处的76%至93%。由于持续的法律的挑战，该条例尚未生效。无论这一特定规则是否经得起司法审查，未来任何在联邦一级管制烟草的尝试都将受到限制。 提供证据证明健康益处大于成本--包括吸烟带来的快乐。考虑到FDA对吸烟法规的健康益处的估计，一种准确的方法来评估损失的消费者剩余对于有效的烟草监管至关重要。FDA目前使用的方法没有坚实的理论或经验基础，这个问题太重要了，不能不正确。因此，我们建议解决这样一个问题：FDA应该如何估计吸烟者失去的消费者剩余的价值，也就是说，放弃享受与吸烟的监管引起的变化？

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In November 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in its first significant attempt to regulate tobacco in more than a decade, proposed regulations requiring graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. Like all major rules, this one was accompanied by a legally required regulatory impact analysis enumerating the rule's costs and benefits. This regulation was, not surprisingly, met with immediate opposition from the tobacco industry, including pointed criticism about the method that FDA used to value the lost consumer surplus associated with reductions in smoking - that is, smokers' foregone enjoyment. In the analysis accompanying the final rule issued in August 2011, the FDA used a compromise method to value lost consumer surplus and estimated that it would offset between 76 and 93 percent of health benefits to smokers associated with the regulation. This regulation has not yet taken effect because of an ongoing legal challenge. Whether or not this particular rule withstands judicial scrutiny, any future attempt to regulate tobacco at the Federal level will have to provide evidence that health benefits outweigh costs-including the foregone enjoyment of smoking. Given the size of the FDA's estimate of the foregone enjoyment relative to the health benefits of the smoking regulation, an accurate method for valuing lost consumer surplus is essential to the effective regulation of tobacco. The methods currently used by FDA do not have a sound theoretical or empirical foundation, and this issue is simply too important not to get right. Therefore, we propose to address the question: how should the FDA estimate the value of smokers' lost consumer surplus-that is, foregone enjoyment- associated with regulation-induced changes in smoking?