Conferences & Seminars

March 27, 2012

4:30-6:00 pm Paul Joskow President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Emeritus, MIT

February 21, 2012

4:30-6:00 pm Michael Greenstone 3M Professor of Environmental Economics, MIT

November 29, 2012

Out of Balance: How Uncertainty Figures in Risk Analysis and Regulatory Economics Adam M. Finkel Senior Fellow and Executive Director, Penn Program on Regulation Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, UMDNJ School of Public Health Details: In this seminar, Adam Finkel, Executive Director of the Penn Program on Regulation, critically examines the disparate treatment given to uncertainty in estimates by risk analysts and economists in the regulatory process. His analysis begins from the premise that errors, overconfidence, or the censoring of information from decision-makers and affected stakeholders are problems whether they occur on the benefit (risks reduced) or on the cost side of the regulatory ledger. He contrasts the substantial improvements in the attention paid to uncertainty by risk assessors over the past 20 years with a striking lack of improvement made by regulatory economists. Finkel develops a 10-level scoring hierarchy for how a regulatory cost analysis could treat uncertainty, presents scores for 75 EPA regulations promulgated in the 1990s, and closely analyzes various major rules from EPA, OSHA, FDA, and NHTSA finalized in the past 10 years. He argue that without a balanced treatment of uncertainty in benefit and in cost, regulatory decisions cannot hope to fulfill their potential, and he offers several sets of disciplinary, bureaucratic, normative, and legal reasons why this asymmetry may persist. By also focusing on how risk assessors and regulatory economists treat differently the aggregate welfare issue — that is, how a distribution of risks to individuals (or of costs to individuals) is summed or integrated to produce a social benefit or social cost estimate — Finkel argues that we currently manage costs and risks differently, as well as assess them with different degrees of rigor. More Hide

October 25, 2011

The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change Dan M. Kahan Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Yale Law School Download Paper [PDF]

October 10, 2011

Subversion or Coordination? Examining the Role of Regulatory Agency Design in the Gulf Oil Disaster Chris Carrigan Fellow, Penn Program on Regulation Download Paper [PDF] Download Abstract [PDF]

September 27, 2011

Ambiguity and Climate Policy Geoffrey Heal Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility Columbia Business School Download Paper [PDF]

"Induced Development in Risky Locations: Fire Suppression and Land Use in the American West"
January 25, 2011

Speaker: Sheila Olmstead, Fellow, Resources for the Future
Summary: Each year, forest fires claim lives or damage property in the American West. Recent wildfires in Boulder and San Diego reveal that fires increasingly threaten more than just wilderness lands and park areas, but encroach on and endanger the homes of ordinary Americans. In this seminar, RFF Fellow Sheila Olmstead considers whether the federal government may be inadvertently contributing to the problem through its forest-fire fighting efforts. In a research project with RFF Fellow Carolyn Kousky, Olmstead tests the hypothesis that efforts by federal agencies to suppress fire on forestland, grassland and shrubland in the Western United States since 1970 have acted as a development subsidy, drawing new low‐density residential and commercial development into regions at risk from wildland fire. Her analysis exploits a natural experiment – a major shift in federal fire suppression policy that occurred in the aftermath of catastrophic fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988. She uses the Yellowstone event along with other sources of spatial and temporal variation in the benefits and costs of fire suppression between 1970 and 2000 to identify the effects of fire suppression on development. The study's results suggest that during periods when the federal government has intensified its expected suppression efforts on public lands, private residential and commercial development has accelerated on nearby land that would benefit from that suppression. More Hide

"Renewable Energy Development Seminar"
February 23, 2010

Sponsors: The Wharton and Penn Law Energy Clubs
Speakers: Ken Kulak, L'94: partner in the Energy Practice of the law firm of Morgan Lewis. Kulak represents energy companies in federal and state litigation and regulatory proceedings, including ratemaking and transactional matters.
Bill Rever WG '82: strategic marketing manager for BP Solar.
Ed Sappin W '95: a renewable energy leader with more than a decade of experience in business and project development, finance and strategy and presently serves as Director, Project Development, Americas and Asia Pacific for BP Solar.
Summary: This interdisciplinary panel focused on the Renewable Energy development process, addressing domestic/international solar and wind development issues and key legal/regulatory concepts from both the developer and utility perspectives.

"REGULATING FROM NOWHERE: ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AND THE SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVITY"
September 28, 2010

Speaker: Douglas Kysar, Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law, Yale Law School

Commentators:
Matthew Adler, Leon Meltzer Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Adam Finkel, Executive Director, Penn Program on Regulation
Kathleen Segerson, Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut

Summary: The dominant economic paradigm in environmental, safety, and health regulation calls for policymakers to calculate and optimize the net benefits of proposed governmental interventions. In this seminar, Professor Kysar draws on his new book, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental Law and the Search for Objectivity, to challenge that dominant economic paradigm. He criticizes the notion that government responsibility to safeguard life can be adequately addressed from an assumed viewpoint of objectivity and optimization, and he argues that the attempt to specify environmental policies through empirical assessment and formalized choice models -- an attempt found most influentially in cost-benefit analysis — obscures the relation of agency and responsibility that the political community bears to its decisions. He favors relying on the principle of precaution to encourage moral self-awareness by a political community and viewing environmental law as part of the social glue that binds a political community together in pursuit of long-term and uncertain goals. To serve that function, law must have continuity with the concepts, values, and discourses expressed by real people. By literally denying the sacredness of life — and indeed the distinctiveness of anything — dominant economic approaches to environmental law fail these tests. More Hide

From left: Douglas Kysar | Adam Finkel, Kathleen Segerson, Matthew Adler, Douglas Kysar, Cary Coglianese | Audience

From left: Kathleen Segerson | Matthew Adler, Douglas Kysar, Cary Coglianese | Kathleen Segerson, Matthew Adler, Douglas Kysar, Cary Coglianese

"Science and Policy after Climate-gate"
March 23, 2010

Speaker: Gary Yohe, Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics, Wesleyan University

Summary: Many in the media, as well as some in the halls of Congress, seized on a few errors found in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in an attempt to discredit the entire report. In this seminar, Professor Gary Yohe argued that none of the handful of misstatements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements) remotely undermined the conclusion that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. He argued for the need to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world. Yohe gave particular attention to the quality-control mechanisms of the IPCC, and offered suggestions about what might be done next to improve IPCC practices and restore full trust in climate science. He concluded the seminar with an analysis of several remaining key policy issues, particularly the challenge of calibrating the economic value of adaptation to climate change. More Hide

View Paper (PDF)
Download March 12 letter from scientists to Congressional and other leaders (The letter can also be found here)

"New Directions in Climate Change Policy: Contrasting Perspectives"
October 23, 2009

Papers
Seawalls Are Not Enough: Climate Change & U.S. Interests
Jody Freeman and Andrew Guzman
Download Paper (PDF)

Trapped Between the Falling Sky and the Rising Seas: The Imagined Terrors of the Impacts of Climate Change
Indur M. Goklany
Comment on Freeman and Guzman
Download Paper (PDF)

Policy for an Economic Downturn: A Proposed Petroleum Fuel Price Stabilization Plan
By Thomas Merrill and David Schizer
Download Paper (PDF)

Policies of Scarcity in a Land of Plenty
Mary J. Hutzler
Comment on Merrill and Schizer
Download Paper (PDF)

Howard Chang
"The Law and Economics of Trade Restrictions in Climate Change Policy."
Download Paper (PDF)

Eyes on a Climate Prize: Rewarding Energy Innovation to Achieve Climate Stabilization
Jonathan H. Adler
Download Paper (PDF)

Can Government be Green?
September 25, 2009

Summary: The multibillion dollar stimulus package (the “American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009”) has been widely promoted as simultaneously accomplishing both economic recovery and environmental progress and protection. This conference critically examined the historical relationship between governmental activity and environmental quality, exploring a host of novel issues that may well come to comprise the forefront of environmental and natural resource policy and scholarship.

Conference Details:

Historical Context: Government and the Environment Panelists: Martin Doyle, University of North Carolina Robert Fishman, University of Michigan Michael Grunwald, Time Magazine

Green Energy and Alternatives: Environmental and Economic Impacts Panelists: Tom Bogart, York College Mary Hutzler, Institute for Energy Research Helen McDade, John Muir Trust, Scotland

NGO Perspectives Panelists: Brent Blackwelder, former President, Friends of the Earth Helen McDade, Director of Policy, John Muir Trust, Scotland

Today's Environmental Law Meets (Tomorrow's) Industrial Scale Renewables Panelists: Maureen Brennan, Baker Hostetler David Buente, Sidley Austin Donald Carr, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman Alexandra Kass, University of Minnesota

Envisioning the Future: Does Expanded Government Involvement in Markets Require a New Model for Environmental and Natural Resource Law? Panelists: Jamison Colburn, Penn State University Frances Dubrowski, Law Office of Frances Dubrowski David Schoenbrod, New York Law School Katrina Wyman, New York University School of Law

Other Recent News & Events

• November 18, 2010 PPR Co-sponsors Wharton Workshop on Third Party Auditing (workshop addresses roles for third parties in improving implementation of the EPA's and OSHA's regulations on the management of low-probability, high-consequence process safety risks)
• March 21, 2011 Energy Law Breakfast Reception with Ken Hurwitz L'76 WG'76, Partner, Haynes and Boone
• April 5, 2011 Penn Law Launches Regulation Blog (environmental law among the topics covered)
• April 13, 2011 Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law Announces 2011 Postgraduate Fellowship Awards (Matthew McFeeley L'11 to partner with Natural Resources Defense Council)

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