In the News

Environmentalists have long-held that the program amounts today to a subsidized destruction of America’s floodplains for the benefit of beachfront vacationers and wealthy homeowners (Rosie O’Donnell, Matt Damon, I’m looking at you). A recent report by New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity backs up these arguments.

Nearly 260 lives could be saved if boilers in big buildings burned cleaner oil, a new study says. “Switching to a less toxic fuel is relatively inexpensive compared to the serious health consequences of burning dirty oil,” said Michael Livermore of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Scott Holladay, an economist who researched coal ash disposal for the New York-based nonprofit the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), said the debate over whether to classify ash as hazardous or not will get the lion’s share of attention, but the language governing beneficial use could be the most important.

“How we define beneficial use will be the meat of this,” Holladay said. “There is room to gut the regulations from within.”

With thousands of barrels of crude still pouring into the sea after BP’s disastrous oil spill April 20, the downsides of offshore oil drilling have become all too clear.

That doesn’t mean that we should never extract the natural resources under our oceans. But it does mean we should wait until we can extract the highest possible price at the lowest costs to make sure Americans are being compensated for the enormous risks we take on when we allow drilling.

The choice of whether or not to drill is not a one-time decision; if we decide not to drill today, that does not mean we can’t drill in the future. Only the choice to drill is irreversible—once we use up a non-renewable resource, that’s it. The reserves of oil and gas offshore can be thought of as an option, one that has considerable value that we need to take into account.

A report titled “Free to Invest: The Economic Benefits of Net Neutrality” from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law concludes “While opponents of net neutrality are correct that it may have some downsides—including decreased investment incentives for ISPs and potential impacts on technological development—the government has tools at its disposal to mitigate these downsides. Moreover, the benefits of net neutrality, especially maintaining investment incentives for the development of new content, are very high.”

A study released in January by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law suggested net neutrality rules would preserve the investments of Web content producers such as newspapers and bloggers.

“You have to look at everything, and no one looks at everything,” said Michael Livermore, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law School. Livermore recently co-authored a study on the economic impact of one of the environmental bills pending in the US Senate.

“Some people think it’s going to be terrible, some think it’s going to be really good,” he said. “You look at the different sectors and do as a good a job as you can.” Of course some might argue that the issue ultimately is not job creation, but saving our civilization from massive environmental turmoil.

The cost of federal flood insurance, including the program’s $20 billion deficit, is “likely dwarfed” by its harmful impacts on natural areas vulnerable to construction, according to a new report. The program, launched 42 years ago as a financial safeguard for threatened homes, is clashing with adaptation policies being prepared for the impacts of climate change, cautions the paper by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law.

A policy research group study has found that the National Flood Insurance Program, a division of FEMA, primarily benefits wealthy homeowners who build in high-risk coastal areas at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity’s analysis, “Flooding the Market”, the flood insurance program’s subsidies help wealthy Americans with large beachfront properties or vacation homes in a typical year, and low-income individuals only during severe catastrophes.