A Selection-Corrected Estimate of Chevron’s Impact on Agency Deference

33 Pages Posted: 2 Jul 2010 Last revised: 9 May 2011

See all articles by Griffin Sims Edwards

Griffin Sims Edwards

University of Alabama at Birmingham - Department of Marketing, Industrial Distribution & Economics

Date Written: June 30, 2010

Abstract

The ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council dramatically changed how judges rule in favor of federal administrative agencies. Previous research has found both theoretically and empirically that Chevron favors agencies and their interpretation of statutes, but the magnitude of Chevron’s impact remains unclear due to possible selection issues biasing the post-Chevron world. I account for the possibility that incentives change both to the challenger of an agency and the agency itself post-Chevron by estimating a break in the trend of agency deference on the date Chevron was decided. This allows me to exploit the exogenous cases that were pending when Chevron was decided while still employing the full sample of rulings. Both parametric and nonparametric specifications of the trend in agency deference suggest that Chevron increased agency deference by about 20 percentage points.

Keywords: Chevron, Selection, Agency Deference

JEL Classification: K23

Suggested Citation

Edwards, Griffin Sims, A Selection-Corrected Estimate of Chevron’s Impact on Agency Deference (June 30, 2010). 5th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1633013 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1633013

Griffin Sims Edwards (Contact Author)

University of Alabama at Birmingham - Department of Marketing, Industrial Distribution & Economics ( email )

The University of Alabama at Birmingham
1720 2nd Ave South
Birmingham, AL 35294
United States

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