Economics and Environmental Policy

Over the last two decades economic analysis has begun to offer increasingly sophisticated and useful insights about environmental problems. Recent innovations have enlarged the range of economic policy instruments and transformed the roles of the various implementation and enforcement institutions. This collection includes 18 essays on economics and environmental policy written over a 20-year period. This volume includes papers on the integration of economic incentives into pollution control which cover theoretical work and empirical studies as well as overviews of emission trading and emission charges. Later papers concentrate on the judicial role in environmental policy (including the perverse incentives created by specific legal doctrines) and environmental enforcement, which deals with issues such as creative penalty structures and the empowerment of nongovernmental organizations. The final papers deal with sustainable development and in particular the role of poverty, the need for technology and capital transfers, and pricing of depletable resources. The essays in this collection address not only theoretical and practical matters associated with environmental policy, but also design and implementation issues.