Quality science for quality decisions: The political regulatory cycle and the integrity of benefit cost analysis with Al McGartland, PhD
Please join the Harvard Chan NIEHS Center for Environmental Health and the Department of Environmental Health for a talk by Al McGartland, PhD, of New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. Dr. McGartland will discuss “Quality science for quality decisions: The political regulatory cycle and the integrity of benefit cost analysis.”
This event will be held in person (HSPH Bldg. 1, 1302) and via Zoom. Register here
About the speaker
Al McGartland is the director of Economic Policy at New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. At Policy Integrity, Al works to improve regulatory economic analyses, integrating law, policy and economics into both research and public commentary.
Al served as the Director of the National Center for Environmental Economics and the lead economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2005 to 2025. In this role, Al advised EPA’s senior leadership on regulatory analyses, science, economics, and environmental policy. He was responsible for insuring EPA’s analyses reflects the latest economic science and developed interdisciplinary risk assessment, benefit assessment, and environmental justice methods to be used in EPA’s regulatory analyses. Al also led the analytic efforts to support U.S. negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol and led the U.S. delegation to the OECD’s Inclusive Forum on Carbon Mitigation Approaches.
Under Al’s leadership, EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics issued EPA’s Guidelines for Preparing Economic Analyses and conducted numerous studies to assess the benefits and costs of environmental policies. Al also supported numerous interagency and White House initiatives, including projects on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases, the Frontiers of Benefit Cost Analysis, and the valuation of reduced health risks from environmental contaminants.
Prior to EPA, Al worked at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. Al also served as the economic advisor to the Chairman at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He is a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the advancement of the profession of environmental and resource economics. Al is also the recipient of the Society of Benefit Cost Analysis fellow and received two Presidential Rank Awards during his EPA career. He holds a PhD from the University of Maryland in environmental economics. Al has published in numerous journals, including Science, the American Economic Review, the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, the Canadian Journal of Economics, the Journal of Environmental Management, the medical journal, Lancet, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
Speaker Information
Organizers
ⓘ Harvard Chan School hosts a diverse array of speakers, invited to share both scholarly research and personal perspectives. They do not speak for the School, and hosting them does not imply endorsement of their views, organizations, or employers.