The Mercatus Center just released a working paper on which I was a co-author. Titled Performance Standards vs. Design Standards: Facilitating a Shift toward Best Practices, the paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of prescriptive and performance-based regulatory requirements.
As the announcement notes:
Performance standards are generally accepted as a best practice in regulatory rulemaking. Yet agencies often default to design standards instead. In “Performance Standards vs. Design Standards: Facilitating a Shift toward Best Practices,” Laura Montgomery, Patrick McLaughlin, Tyler Richards, and Mark Febrizio examine the advantages of performance standards over design standards.
The paper itself is available by link in the grey box at the site.