In the News

With one stroke of the pen, the FTC can compel hotels to disclose all-in pricing from the moment in which a consumer searches for rates and eliminate “drip pricing.” In a well-argued column in the New York Times, Max Sarinsky argues why this matters to consumers and businesses.

In a petition to the FTC, Brian Canfield, Jack Lienke, Matthew Peterson and Max Sarinsky of the Institute for Policy Integrity argue that drip pricing serves no legitimate business purpose and harms consumers, and so should be outlawed by the FTC.

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to request that the regulator ban so-called “drip pricing” practices. Should the FTC agree, such rules would have a dramatic impact on ticket marketplaces, as such “drip prices” are common on both primary and secondary ticketing systems.

“The transition away from relying on fossil gas in buildings will involve intermediate solutions. But some solutions carry fewer physical risks and are easier to eventually cast aside than others,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.

If the international community does not step up to combat climate change, it is likely to do $1.7 trillion a year in damage by 2025, increasing to about $30 trillion a year by 2075, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Integrity.

An important lesson from the Trump days is how a robust cost-benefit analysis helps an agency both defend itself in court and guard against future rollbacks. But agencies must also ensure that they finalize any big policies in time to have the rules reviewed in court before the next transition, which means that there is no time to waste.

Yesterday’s D.C. Circuit ruling is the latest decision to rebuke FERC for inadequate climate analysis. Judicial rebukes are likely to continue until FERC fully considers the social cost of greenhouse gases in its analyses, said Richard Revesz.

Drip pricing has no legitimate business purpose and harms consumers in at least two key ways. It can also be damaging to businesses, and it is not a problem that the market will correct on its own. That's why several colleagues from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and I filed a petition for rule-making last month, calling on the F.T.C. to ban the use of drip pricing. 

New York University’s regulatory policy center is urging EPA to adopt “best practices” for TSCA risk management rules that would lead to stringent limits on existing chemicals, potentially offering legal and policy justifications the agency could use to grant environmentalists’ requests to go beyond what they see as too-lenient Trump-era chemical evaluations.

To ward off concern from conservative justices, EPA could recommend a more limited regulatory approach, such as carbon capture and sequestration, said Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. He said EPA officials are likely to be asking themselves: “Is there a bulletproof thing we can do that will actually achieve meaningful emissions reductions?"