YSE Professors Help Federal Government Account for Environment in Regulatory System

YSE Professors Eli Fenichel and Kenneth Gillingham played key roles in updating a White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guide on how federal agencies calculate their regulations’ benefits and costs to account more fully for the environment. 

All major regulations must undergo benefit-cost analysis (BCA), and the U.S. executive branch is responsible for doing BCA for programs and regulations.  Fenichel, Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, worked to update Circular No. A-4, which is the federal government’s primary document for guiding BCA  and was last revised in 2003. Circulars are the highest-level guidance issued by OMB. 

“This document has tremendous influence over what government agencies consider, how they consider it, when they make regulatory decisions, and also over the ability of the government to defend or be challenged in court over those decisions,” Fenichel said. 

The new update  references "ecosystem services" 18 times and "environmental" 74 times, including five mentions of "environmental justice." The document is supported by new Guidance for Assessment Changes to Environmental and Ecosystem Services in benefit-costs analysis

While on leave to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which works closely with the OMB, Fenichel was central to this historic effort to modernize regulatory guidance and helped draft these updates. The documents go through extensive public comment and peer review. Gillingham, professor of environmental and  energy economics, was one of the official peer reviewers on the critical document. Yale Law Professor Zach Liscow led an update of a related federal guidance for BCA for programs and operation, OMB Circular A-94 (last revised in 1992), which Fenichel also helped to revise.

 In a recent White House roundtable focusing on the first-of-its-kind report "Advancing the Frontiers of Benefit Cost Analysis: Federal Priorities and Directions for Future Research," Fenichel discussed the effort to develop environmental economic accounts to track the quantity and quality of natural resources, including air, water, land, wildlife, pollinators, energy, minerals, soils, forests, wetlands, environmental activities, urban green space, and other environmental assets.

"It was great to see projects from agencies with expertise in physical and natural sciences working with agencies with expertise in social science," Fenichel said at the roundtable.  "We really need this systematic viewpoint. The natural capital accounts and the environmental economic statistics will work with other national economic statistics to create baselines that will allow us think about change and ultimately let us separate the unintended consequences of regulations that can be avoided because they are no longer unanticipated."

 

Photo of The White House

Eli Fenichel

Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics

Kenneth Gillingham

Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs; Professor of Environmental & Energy Economics

More News in Brief

YSE Professor Participates in White House Roundtable on Federal Benefit-Cost Analysis

A key initiative of the Biden-Harris Administration is to improve policymaking by increasing collaboration between the federal government and the research community. Since 2023, the administration has released an annual report identifying areas where research could benefit federal decision making. At a recent White House roundtable on the second annual report "Advancing the Frontiers of Benefit Cost Analysis: Federal Priorities and Directions for Future Research," Kenneth Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics, discussed ways to strengthen federal benefit-cost analysis. 

"What I love about this document is that it not only points out several areas that need further research to improve benefit-cost analysis but equally importantly, it provides clear guidance to the research community and a set of suggestions for how the federal government can build connections," Gillingham said.

Hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Council of Economic Advisers, the roundtable brought together academic and research experts to discuss progress and consider actions to continue advancing the frontiers of BCA. 

"It provides useful guidance on how research enters into the regulatory agenda. It also provides guidance on where researchers can find out what the government needs to know," Gillingham said of the report.

All major regulations must undergo benefit-cost analysis; the U.S. executive branch is responsible for doing these analyses for programs and regulations. Gillingham and Eli Fenichel, Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, played vital roles in updating a White House Office of Management and Budget guide on how federal agencies calculate their regulations' benefits and costs to fully account for natural resources. 

Direct Link

Kenneth Gillingham

Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs; Professor of Environmental & Energy Economics

Chad Oliver Honored with Barrington Moore Memorial Award

From his groundbreaking research on the impact of disturbance on forest dynamics to the development of the Landscape Management System that allows users to simulate forest growth to his seminal work on forest stand dynamics, Chadwick D. Oliver, Pinchot Professor Emeritus at the Yale School of the Environment, has transformed the field of forestry.

Contributions made over his more than 50-year-career have earned him the Barrington Moore Memorial Award in Biological Science from the Society of American Forestry (SAF), which recognizes outstanding achievement in biological research that led to the advance of forestry. Oliver will receive the award Sept. 19 at SAF’s national convention in Loveland, Colorado

“Receiving the Barrington Award confirms the effectiveness of an open, cooperative approach to science that many of my colleagues and I have used with each other and with our students. That is, we make individual discoveries, but we best serve if we build on the scientific works of our predecessors, work cooperatively with our colleagues, leave increased knowledge, and open pathways for others to build on what we have learned, he said.

Oliver, who taught at YSE for more than 20 years before retiring in 2022, authored more than 150 books, chapters, and research papers that have garnered over 12,000 citations. His conceptual model — and subsequent paper — that contended that disturbances in forests were not exceptions, but the norm and that all forests arise from and are affected by natural and human disturbances countered the prevailing view in ecology at the time and revolutionized the field of silviculture.  His 1990 book published with Bruce Larson ’78 MFS, “Forest Stand Dynamics,” which focused on how the species and arrangement of trees favored different size, shapes, and qualities, set a new framework on forest development.

In addition to his research, Oliver worked with hundreds of mid-career professionals in dozens of countries on land management practices and testified at Congressional hearings on reducing fire risks and managing spotted owls.

“I do not believe you could get a more deserving person for this award given Chad’s contribution to stand dynamics, his engagement with the early framework for computer generated programs for landscape management, and his broader engagement with promoting better forest policy, and management decisions particularly in the U.S. West,” said Mark Ashton, Morris K. Jesup Professor of Silviculture and Forest Ecology and director of Yale Forests who nominated Oliver.

 

Direct Link

Chad Oliver portrait

Chad Oliver. Photo credit: Julia Luckett

YSE Professor Recognized with UCGIS Lifetime Achievement in GIScience Education Award

Dana Tomlin, professor of GIS, has received the UCGIS Lifetime Achievement in GIScience Education Award.

“When I first came to Yale as a doctoral student, much of my reason for doing so was to pursue a hobby-like interest in the use of computers to play (I mean work) with maps,” Tomlin said. “Having now made a career out of that hobby, I am more enthused than ever at the prospect of sharing this work, I mean play, with others who also enjoy thinking spatially.”

Tomlin, the originator of Map Algebra, a set of pixelwise and neighborhood computation techniques across multiple rasters, is known for his commitment to GIS education. For almost five decades, Tomlin has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses emphasizing practical demonstration alongside strategic reasoning and creating innovative teaching materials, such as detailed ArcGIS tutorial handouts and clear documentation to supplement lectures. In his nomination letter, one former student wrote, “Dana teaches his students how to think spatially, how to break down complex problems into a series of steps, engaging their creativity at the same time.” 

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science established the Innovation in GIScience Education Award in 2020,. The award recognizes contributions to GISscience education.

Direct Link

Charles Dana Tomlin

Professor (Adjunct)