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Jason Schwartz is legal director at NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Jason Schwartz: Unfortunately, the trend across the country is toward adding more levels of regulatory review that aren’t particularly helpful.

Especially when, according to Schwartz, states regulate almost 20 percent of the U.S. economy.

This blog integrates material from recent analyses by the Institute for Policy Integrity and Economic Policy Institute (click here, here, and here) showing why “job-killing regulation” claims are bad economics and factually incorrect (click here for a broader discussion of the role of regulation in a well functioning economy).

No surprise that many people recently scratched their heads when the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity argued that two new EPA rules for curbing power plant emissions would trigger 1.4 million job losses, and the Political Economy Research Institute countered that the rules actually would generate 1.4 million jobs. Which calculation is right? The Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law cited the colliding evaluations in its recent report, “The Regulatory Red Herring.” Thankfully, it also brought needed perspective to the discussion.

Today’s lapse drew some criticism. Instead of proposing a rule, EPA “moved the goal post for a fourth time since September,” Edna Ishayik, communications director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, wrote in an email.

The institute sent a letter to EPA today outlining several recommendations on how the rule should be shaped.

Between 2007 and 2011, use of the phrase “job-killing regulations” in U.S. newspapers increased by 17,550%. Recently, committees of the 112th U.S. House of Representatives convened twenty hearings in its first twenty days that explored the link between regulations and the country’s job numbers. Protections for our public health and environment in particular have been on the receiving end of this barrage.

Claims that regulations have a significant impact on American employment call for careful scrutiny. Because they are repeated so often, the idea that regulations “kill jobs” can start to sound true, or at least “truthy.” But when you scratch the surface of these claims, too often they are based more on ideology than sound methodology.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law attempts to bring some economic rationality to the regulatory discourse — however quixotic that might be in the current political environment, not to mention in a presidential election year.

The report is titled “The Regulatory Red Herring: The Role of Job Impact Analyses in Environmental Policy Debates.” Yet somewhat surprisingly, Michael Livermore, the institute’s executive director, does not oppose factoring job impact into the cost-benefit analysis. Rather, he argues for adopting a more sophisticated approach than the prevalent knuckleheaded assumption — my words, not his — that increased regulation inevitably results in fewer jobs.

Are economic analyses of U.S. EPA’s air regulations effective? During today’s OnPoint, Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law, discusses a new report explaining why contradictory economic models can confuse the conversation and debate over air regulations. Livermore also discusses the impact of EPA’s latest round of oil and gas air regulations.

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University looked at some of these job estimates in a recent report and concluded they varied widely depending on the economic model and data used. In addition, the institute said the limitations of these estimates are “inconsistently reported and too often ignored.” The differences are huge, ranging from losing more than a million jobs to gaining nearly that many.

“In an advocacy context, job impact analyses can tell very different stories, often depending on the narrator,” the report said. The institute said there are estimates predicting everything from a 1.3 million job loss to a 723,000 job gain from the imposition of renewable energy standards, depending on the model. On EPA power plant regulations, sci-fi fans can choose from two different “mirror universes”: the rules would create or destroy 1.4 million jobs, depending on whether you believe the industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity or the Political Economy Research Institute.

“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.