In the News

“These job impact analyses are extremely sensitive to data and model structure, but in policy discussions the underlying assumptions and limitations of models are inconsistently reported and too often ignored,” says New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, which released a report called “The Regulatory Red Herring.”

“It’s a win for the environment, it’s a win for the natural gas sector, it’s definitely a win for the public,” said Jason Schwartz, legal director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. It is still relatively unclear how to measure the benefits, said Schwartz. Less work has been done on the costs of methane emissions to society.

Michael Livermore, who directs the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law, said EPA has a statutory obligation to write existing-source rules for greenhouse gases. He suggested the agency might want to avoid heightened speculation about what form those rules will take so early in the rulemaking process.

“They’re trying to keep the focus on this rule, rather than on the rules that are on the horizon,” he said. Existing-source rules, he said, could take months or years to write.

The EPA’s first ever greenhouse gas standards for new power plants have already prompted a backlash from some in industry. But rather than bow to pressure, the agency should work to increase the net benefits of the rules while lowering compliance costs for businesses. They can achieve this by barring old, dirty coal-fired plants from slipping by the rules and by increasing businesses’ flexibility in adhering to the standards.

You hear a lot these days about government regulations as “job-killers.” Well, a new study out of NYU is urging the EPA to consider jobs when it proposes new environmental rules. That literally means factoring in job loss or job creation estimates into the cost/benefit analysis that comes with each of these new regulations. We speak with Michael Livermore, the director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law about the study.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Integrity examines the political practice of pitting environmental protection against jobs and economic growth.

The study concludes that jobs gained or lost to environmental regulation warrant further scrutiny or are often stated out of context.

The report is critical of utilizing cost-benefit analysis in way that is inaccurate, misleading or otherwise “not helpful in debates over environmental protections.

With the presidential election paring down to two candidates, the subject of environmental regulations and economic implications is building up. A new report by a non-partisan think tank is now forewarning the electorate to disregard the political rhetoric and to ask more critical questions.

New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity says that when candidates discuss the affect that regulations will have on jobs, voters need to wear their thinking caps. The variables used to arrive at such calculations are hardly ever discussed whereas the “bottom lines” are routinely promoted.

As Election Day draws near, politicians rely increasingly on conflating environmental regulations with employment numbers, a political game that lacks nuance and sidesteps the complicated reality of the situation, says a new report from the Institute for Policy Integrity.

The result is “too much pressure on [jobs] forecasts that are so sensitive,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law and one of the authors of the report released Tuesday.

The Institute for Policy Integrity took on the task of shining light on how job impact analysis is (ab)used in political discussion: The Regulatory Red Herring: The Role of Job Impact Analyses in Environmental Policy Debates. The executive summary provides a cogent example of the challenges in the discussion.

But on Tuesday, the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law said in a new report that despite the limitations of current methods of measuring job gains and losses, they should be considered when drawing up future environmental rules.

Michael A. Livermore, the institute’s director and the principal author of the study, noted that the the oratory surrounding job impacts has heated up in recent years — for example, in the debates over new Clean Air Act rules and the Keystone XL oil pipeline. (His report noted that the term “job-killing regulations” had appeared in a sampling of American newspapers four times in 2007 and 706 times in 2011.)