Exploring Recent Changes to Federal Benefit-Cost Analysis, with Bryan Hubbell

About this episode

Bryan Hubbell discusses the importance of benefit-cost analysis in environmental policy and critiques recent changes to federal practices.

In this episode, host Kristin Hayes sits down with Resources for the Future (RFF) Senior Fellow Bryan Hubbell to look back at Hubbell’s public-service career at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As an environmental economist, Hubbell led efforts to integrate the social sciences into EPA’s environmental policy research and establish methods to calculate the benefits of clean air. Under his leadership, EPA developed the Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program, which has provided an accessible and rigorous way to evaluate the impacts of air-pollution regulations. The quantification and monetization of air-quality benefits are foundational to benefit-cost analyses, which Hubbell stresses are crucial to well-informed policy decisionmaking. Hubbell maintains that recent efforts to remove benefit calculations from federal benefit-cost analysis practices do not stack up against the years of stringent testing and research invested into creating these measures. References and recommendations: “If/Then: Ignoring the Benefits of Air Pollution Regulations Will Lead to Worse Policy Decisions” by Bryan Hubbell and Alan Krupnick…

People in this episode

Host: Kristin Hayes

Guest: Bryan Hubbell

Topics covered

• federal benefit-cost analysis
• environmental policy
• air pollution
• economic evaluation

Keywords

• EPA
• Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program
• social sciences
• policy decisionmaking

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: If/Then: Ignoring the Benefits of Air Pollution Regulations, “How the US Environmental Protection Agency Got It Wrong About Monetizing Benefits of Air Pollution Regulations, Estimating the Public Health Benefits of Proposed Air Pollution Regulations, Particles of Truth, The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

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