Last week we blogged about the deeply flawed report, Cost of State Regulations on California Small Businesses Study, which prominent economists called “schlock science” and “devoid of anything resembling intellectual content.” It turns out that the authors of this report wrote another highly suspect report – Cost of AB 32 on California Small Businesses. An analysis by a Stanford professor, James L. Sweeney, concluded that this report’s “estimates are highly biased, are based on poor logic and unsound economic analysis, and are likely to be too large.” Another analysis, by UCLA Professor Matthew E. Kahn, found that the AB 32 report’s estimates are “fatally flawed,” and an analysis by Tufts University Professor Frank Ackerman calls both the state regulations report and the AB 32 report “unsound and unreliable economic analysis.”
Excuse us for flogging what should be a dead horse, but as an organization that does its best to maintain high research standards, we find it troubling when others do not.
— Alissa Anderson and Jean Ross
California Budget Bites 