This article makes the case for "fear assessment," and explains in detail how fear and anxiety should be quantified and monetized as part of a formal, regulatory cost-benefit analysis.

This article is the first part of a two-part examination of the contentious issue of how state governments' provision of goods and services to the public should be taxed under a VAT.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) has been an important policy tool used by the government since the 1980s, when the Reagan administration ordered that all major new regulations be subjected to a rigorous test of whether their projected benefits would outweigh their costs. In their new book, New Foundations of Cost-Benefit Analysis,...