Congress periodically considers legislation that would change federal permitting requirements affecting private and public investment.
Changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are an example.
In some cases, legislation would also affect state, local, or tribal permitting requirements.
CBO developed an analytical approach to estimate how changes to permitting requirements would affect private investment and, therefore, the capital stock that contributes to economic output.
In that approach, CBO estimates the change in the time to build that would result from the permitting changes.
That change in the time to build is modeled as a change in the user cost of capital, which is similar to how CBO models investment responses to changes in taxes.
