Does the amount of participation matter? Public comments,agency responses and the time to finalize a regulation

The notice and comment rulemaking process is a fundamental part of how agencies write regulations. While this process is starting to receive more empirical attention, the question of how the number of comments that an agency receives affects its decision-making process has received little examination. This paper uses Boolean analysis to examine nine rules from two agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services and evaluates the impact of a high volume of comments on agency changes to proposed rules and the time an agency takes to finalize a proposed rule. These nine cases suggest that agencies are most likely to change their proposals when they receive a high volume of comments on highly complex rules that are not very politically salient. Highly complex rules are also likely to take a long time to finalize when there are many public comments however it is often other factors that cause a long delay between proposed and final rules.

Asia‐Pacific economic cooperation: Progress and prospects

Secretary of Foreign Affairs Domingo L. Siazon Jr. of the Philippines discusses the Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's path to the present, and charts a map for its future. Siazon sees the importance of promoting greater private‐sector involvement in APEC and enhancing economic cooperation among member economies. Siazon discusses the special significance of this year's meetings to be held at Subic Bay in the Philippines, the former home of the US Pacific Fleet and now a growing industrial and tourism center. Pursuing APEC's free‐trade goals, he says, holds the brightest economic future for the Philippines and the region.