Our work benefits from collaboration between economic experts and industry partners, including trade associations and corporate representatives. We interview stakeholders to understand perceived challenges and opportunities from proposed regulations, which enhances our rigorous economic analysis.

Brattle can leverage extensive experience in consumer class actions to advise clients on damages approaches in greenwashing matters.

Our Environment & Natural Resources practice works in collaboration with Brattle’s Consumer Protection & Product Liability practice to deliver a comprehensive assessment of greenwashing claims. Our analyses rely on market data as well as surveys of consumer preferences and perceptions.

We evaluate both historical measures of visitation as well as tailored surveys of recreational behavior to establish baseline levels of use and the extent of injury. These data serve as inputs to econometric analyses – ranging from before-and-after approaches to travel cost models – that quantify the value of lost use.

To examine the impact of environmental harm on property values, we apply hedonic and repeat sales models for the relevant community. We also consider short-term losses from dislocation and property damage.

We assist government and regulatory entities, companies, and associations in analyzing and executing strategies to meet both business objectives and regulations related to air quality and climate change, which continue to be at the center of energy and environmental policy debates. Brattle economists have also actively participated in the development and compliance of the Clean Air Act and related federal and state laws and regulations for more than 30 years.

Brattle has developed in-house regional and national macroeconomic models that enable us to study the impacts of environmental policy on employment, incomes, and tax receipts. These models are frequently combined with our own electricity market simulation and capacity planning tools for closer examination of those markets. These tools also enable us to model changes in air quality related to emissions of greenhouse gases and the Clean Air Act’s criteria pollutants.

The Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly referred to as Superfund, requires, among other things, the quantification of natural resource damages and the allocation of clean-up and mitigation costs among the principally responsible parties.

By combining information on contaminant sources and levels with site histories, we are capable of addressing issues of divisibility and allocation of costs when multiple parties may be implicated at a site. This experience is also relevant for assessing costs related to infrastructure investments. In particular, we are familiar with the models and methods typically employed by the government, including the EPA’s BEN model.

Our skillset in calculating the value of land and resources can be applied to a variety of matters, including the denial of historic land rights to Native American tribes and restrictions on economic activity arising under the Endangered Species Act.