Recent Projects

Economists and Climate Change: Consensus and Open Questions describes and analyzes the results of a survey sent to 289 economic experts on climate change. Over 84% of the respondents to the poll said that the effects of global warming will create significant risks to important sectors of the United States and global economies.

There is a dearth of studies about the effects of the proceduralization of the rulemaking process on state regulations. In the Regulatory Weeds of the Garden State focuses on regulations promulgated in New Jersey, both prior to and following major procedural changes enacted in the state in 2001.

This brief compiles estimates from several different federal agencies, and calculates that the economic benefits of the emissions cap in the Waxman-Markey bill likely dwarf the costs by as much as 9-to-1 or more. The benefit to cost ratio was determined using the EPA’s previously released (and peer reviewed) cost estimates and a newly released “social cost of carbon” estimate from an interagency process which provides a conservative dollar figure for the benefits of greenhouse gas reductions.

No More Excuses: The Economic Case for Coal Ash Regulation is a brief but careful analysis which reveals several compelling findings on the regulation of the toxic by-product of coal combustion. In broad strokes, it is clear that the benefits of regulating coal ash storage facilities would far outweigh the costs. The benefits of a regulation requiring coal ash to be stored in dry conditions and in synthetically-lined, covered facilities could save tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars per storage facility.

In Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis and Collective Action, Daniel H. Cole describes the influence of cost-benefit analysis and explains how and why it is a politically useful tools for agencies, even when those agencies are not required by law to prepare regulatory cost-benefit analyses (RCBA). As Cole says in his introduction, “For better or for worse, RCBAs have significantly influenced policies for dealing with, or not dealing with, collective action problems ranging from airport enlargement to global climate change.”

In Federalism Accountability: “Agency Forcing” Measures, author Catherine M. Sharkey advocates a variety of “agency-forcing” measures designed to enhance the ability of Congress, the executive, and especially the courts to ensure that agencies abide by executive mandates and other reforms, and to provide a check on overt politicization or inaction on agencies’ part.

This detailed legal analysis provides an in-depth and thorough discussion of greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act answering the questions: What are EPA’s obligations under the Clean Air Act, and how far can and should the agency go to regulate greenhouse gases?

Fixing Regulatory Review: Recommendations for the Next Administration provides a set of recommendations for the Obama Administration to improve the process of regulatory review. It includes ten principles that should inform regulatory review and cost-benefit analysis of regulation, as well as a detailed markup of the Executive Order signed by President William Jefferson Clinton that established the structure of review that is currently in place.

Unlocking the Green Economy: How Carbon Pricing Can Open the Floodgates of Private Investment in Clean Energy calls for the Obama Administration to implement carbon pricing as a necessary step to transition to a green U.S. economy.

This report examines the regulatory failures of the Bush years on issues as wide-ranging as climate change and workplace safety, and concludes that these failures did not arise because of an overuse of economics, but because economic and scientific evidence was ignored.