A central question in law and economics is whether nontax legal rules should be designed solely to maximize efficiency or whether they also should account for concerns about the distribution of income. This question takes on particular importance in the context of cost-benefit analysis. Federal agencies apply cost-benefit analysis when writing regulations that generate multibillion-dollar impacts on the U.S. economy and profound effects on millions of Americans’ lives. In the past, agencies’ cost-benefit analyses typically have ignored the income-distributive consequences of those regulations. That may soon change: on his first day in office, President Joe Biden instructed his Office of Management and Budget to propose procedures for incorporating distributive considerations into agencies’ cost-benefit analyses, thus bringing renewed relevance to a long-running law-and-economics debate.

This Article explores what it might mean in practice for agencies to incorporate distributive considerations into cost-benefit analysis. It uses, as a case study, a 2014 rule promulgated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requiring new motor vehicles to have rearview cameras that reduce the risk of backover crashes. As with most major federal regulations that impose large dollar costs, the principal benefit of the rear-visibility rule is a reduction in premature mortality. Quantitative cost-benefit analysis typically translates mortality reductions into dollar terms based on the “value of a statistical life,” or VSL. Any distributive evaluation of the rule will depend critically on a parameter known as the “income elasticity of the VSL,” which reflects the relationship between an individual’s income and her willingness to pay for mortality risk reductions. Although agencies’ cost-benefit analyses use the same VSL for all individuals regardless of income, the Department of Transportation—of which NHTSA is a part—has issued guidance on the income elasticity of the VSL for other purposes. When this Article applies the Department of Transportation’s income-elasticity guidance in its distributive analysis, the rearvisibility rule appears to be regressive: it generates net costs for lower-income groups and net benefits for higher-income groups. Rerunning the distributive analysis with equal-dollar VSLs at all income levels, the rule appears to be progressive: lower-income individuals are the primary beneficiaries and higher-income individuals are the losers. This Article goes on to explain why assumptions about the relationship between income and the VSL will have important implications for distributive analyses of other lifesaving regulations.

This Article then asks what agencies ought to do: Should they incorporate distributive objectives into cost-benefit analysis by assigning greater weight to dollars in lower-income individuals’ hands, and should they assign different-dollar VSLs to individuals with different incomes? The two questions are closely linked. Incorporating distributive objectives into cost-benefit analysis of lifesaving regulations while maintaining equal-dollar VSLs for the rich and the poor will potentially produce perverse outcomes that—according to standard economic thinking—actually redistribute from poor to rich. After canvassing options, this Article concludes that the status quo approach—equal weights for low-income and high-income individuals’ dollars, equal-dollar VSLs for low-income and high-income individuals—makes practical sense in light of expressive concerns, informational burdens, and institutional constraints. This Article ends by reflecting on the case study’s lessons for broader debates over legal system design, and it explains why the issues that arise in the rear-visibility case study are likely to affect other efforts to redistribute through nontax legal rules.

法律和经济学的一个核心问题是，非税法律规则是否应该仅仅为了最大化效率而设计，或者它们是否也应该考虑到对收入分配的担忧。这个问题在成本效益分析的背景下尤为重要。联邦机构在制定对美国经济产生数十亿美元影响并对数百万美国人的生活产生深远影响的法规时，会应用成本效益分析。过去，机构的成本效益分析通常忽略了这些法规对收入分配的影响。这种情况可能很快就会改变：在上任的第一天，乔·拜登总统就指示他的管理和预算办公室提出将分配考虑纳入机构成本效益分析的程序，

本文探讨了机构在实践中将分配考虑纳入成本效益分析可能意味着什么。它使用国家公路交通安全管理局 (NHTSA) 颁布的 2014 年规则作为案例研究，该规则要求新机动车辆配备后视摄像头，以降低倒车事故的风险。与大多数征收高额美元成本的主要联邦法规一样，后方能见度规则的主要好处是减少过早死亡率。定量成本效益分析通常根据“统计生命的价值”或 VSL 将死亡率降低转化为美元。对规则的任何分配评估都将严重依赖于称为“VSL 的收入弹性”的参数，”这反映了个人收入与她为降低死亡风险而支付的意愿之间的关系。尽管机构的成本效益分析对所有个人使用相同的 VSL，而不管收入如何，但 NHTSA 所属的交通部已经发布了用于其他目的的 VSL 收入弹性指南。当本文在其分配分析中应用交通部的收入弹性指导时，可追溯性规则似乎是递减的：它为低收入群体产生净成本，为高收入群体产生净收益。重新对所有收入水平的等美元 VSL 进行分配分析，该规则似乎是渐进的：低收入个人是主要受益者，高收入个人是输家。

然后本文提出了机构应该做什么：他们是否应该通过为低收入个人手中的美元分配更大的权重来将分配目标纳入成本效益分析，以及他们是否应该将不同美元的 VSL 分配给不同收入的个人？这两个问题密切相关。将分配目标纳入救生法规的成本效益分析，同时保持富人和穷人同等的 VSL 可能会产生不正当的结果，根据标准的经济思维，实际上会从穷人重新分配给富人。在探讨了各种选择之后，本文得出结论，现状方法——低收入和高收入个人的美元权重相等，考虑到表达关切、信息负担和制度限制，为低收入和高收入个人提供等价的 VSL 具有实际意义。本文最后回顾了案例研究对法律制度设计进行更广泛辩论的经验教训，并解释了为什么在后方可见性案例研究中出现的问题可能会影响通过非税法律规则进行再分配的其他努力。