We at PPI believe that regulatory reform is an essential part of a high-growth, high-innovation economic strategy. But regulatory reform is not a secret code word for less regulation. Rather, we are looking for better ways to accomplish essential regulatory goals. That’s why we have long supported the idea of a Regulatory Improvement Commission, a proposal that was picked up and turned into legislation by Senators Angus King and Roy Blunt.
From that perspective, we were very glad to host a distinguished panel of regulatory experts this week on the subject of 21st Century Regulation: Using Technology and Data Analysis to Improve Results;. Brian Bieron of eBay presented PayPal’s proposal for “developing new regulatory models that better achieve societal goals and also support rapid innovation.” Brian argued that regulators could and should take advantage of “increasingly ubiquitous 21st Century technology and data-analytics techniques used by technology-enabled organizations” to make faster and better decisions. This would be an enormous change, since the current regulatory process is biased in the direction of moving slowly. Elaine Kamarck of Brookings and Hester Peirce of Mercatus commented. Discussion was both vigorous and on-point.
A copy of the PayPal paper can be found here. It should be required reading for anyone interested in new ways of making regulation work better, without harming innovation.
