Stylistic Similarities Between Rosen's Recent Article and the Op-Ed

It is an extreme challenge to analyze the style of the op-ed to determine its author. For one thing, we have no idea if the op-ed was ghost-written or heavily edited by someone else before submission to the New York Times. We also have no idea how much the author tried to disguise his identity by altering his normal style.

I will argue here that a clean reading of the op-ed, with no assumptions, shows a few stylistic tendencies. I will then take Rosen's most recent article, Putting Regulators on a Budget (2016) and show how those same tendencies are demonstrated. In some cases I will also pull examples from Rosen's other writings.

This by no means proves the authorship of the op-ed. I am not a forensic linguist, and forensic linguistics isn't a developed science in any case. But some of the similarities are striking.

 Use of Unusual Hyphenated Phrases

NA=National Affairs and NYT=New York Times

NA: "macroeconomic impacts of regulatory-policy decisions"
NA: "at a regulatory-budget process "
NA: "it would improve priority-setting "
NA: “and agency-by-agency limits”
NA: “current administration has discerned novel ways to issue once-unthinkable new rules”
NYT: "two-track presidency"
NYT: "near-ceaseless negative coverage"
NYT: “his mass-marketing of the notion”
Another example from a court filing:
"reaffirm this Court's robust protection of the very free-expression rights"

Curt Sentences with a Chatty Style

NA: "The answer is nothing: No such budget exists."
NA: “So what is to be done? How can government agencies”
NYT: "I would know. I am one of them."
NYT: "Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless "

Liberal Use of Em Dashes

NA: “The enormous volume of existing rules — and the costs they
already impose — will also need to be considered.”
NA: “it is important that the budget caps apply to costs — not to benefits — just as with the fiscal budget.”
NYT: “But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style”
NYT: The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration”
NYT: "So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over."

Beginning a Paragraph with a Short Phrase Followed by a Colon

NA: "Here is how it would work: A regulatory-budgeting process would involve multiple steps, analogous to the fiscal-budget process."
NYT: "Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators"
Another example from a blog post:
“Another interesting wrinkle: As with the earlier NLRB rule,”


Note, the National Affairs article uses an unusual number of scare quotes, as does most of Rosen’s other writing. This is not shown in the NYT article much, except in this case: “To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left.”