REGULATORY POLICY PROGRAM The Regulatory Policy Program at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government serves as a catalyst and clearinghouse for the study of regulation across Harvard University. The program's objectives are to cross-pollinate research, spark new lines of inquiry, and increase the connection between theory and practice. Through seminars and symposia, working papers, and new media, RPP explores themes that cut across regulation in its various domains: market

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... and the public policy case for government regulation; the efficacy and efficiency of various regulatory instruments; and the most effective ways to foster transparent and participatory regulatory processes. Th e idea of cost-benefi t analysis has been spreading internationally for centuriesat least since an American named Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter in  to his British friend, Joseph Priestley, recommending that Priestley weigh the pros and cons of a diffi cult decision in what Franklin dubbed a "moral or prudential algebra" (Franklin ) (more on this letter below). Several recent studies show that the use of benefi t-cost analysis (BCA), for both public projects and public regulation of private activities, is now unfolding in countries on every habitable continent around the world (Livermore and Revesz ; Quah and Toh ; De Francesco ; Livermore ; Cordova-Novion and Jacobzone ). Th is global diff usion of BCA is intermingled with the global diff usion of regulatory capitalism, in which privatized market actors are supervised by expert regulatory agencies (Levi-Faur ; Simmons et al. ), and with the international spread of ex ante regulatory precautions to anticipate and prevent risks despite uncertainty (Wiener et al. ). Th e spread of regulatory precautions to govern markets and risks, and the spread of BCA as an analytic method to evaluate public projects and regulatory policies, have led in turn to the global diff usion of institutional systems for regulatory oversight. Th is chapter addresses the diff usion of such regulatory oversight systems, which oft en employ BCA as a tool for policy evaluation (typically under the rubric of regulatory impact assessment, RIA). Th e diff usion of regulatory oversight systems using RIA, closely following the diff usion of regulation and precaution, makes intuitive sense as a mechanism for accountability and guidance of regulatory power. But this pattern also challenges conventional claims. First, it shows that orthodox notions of discrete "national styles of regulation" (Vogel ) and early "legal origins" of modern regulation (la Porta et al. ) are belied or at least markedly eroded by the modern reality of the exchange of ideas across complex interconnected and increasingly hybrid regulatory systems. History matters, but it is not destiny; modern regulatory systems exist in global networks and evolve through learning, borrowing, and hybridization (Levi-Faur ; Wiener et al. ). Second, precaution and RIA/BCA, though oft en portrayed as antagonists, are better understood as complementary components of a deeper trend: the diff usion of regulatory foresight. Both precaution and RIA are eff orts to forecast the future consequences of current choices.