Improving environmental decisions: A transaction-costs story

David Pannell, Anna M. Roberts, Geoff Park and Jennifer Alexander

Ecological Economics, 2013, vol. 88, issue C, 244-252

Abstract: A multidisciplinary team of researchers made efforts to influence the design and implementation of environmental policy in Australia. A focus of these efforts was the development of the Investment Framework for Environmental Resources (INFFER). In addition, the team undertook a range of communication activities, training, user support, and participation in committees and enquiries. Transaction costs were relevant to these efforts in a variety of ways. Environmental managers perceived INFFER to involve relatively high transaction costs. A balance was struck between the system having simplicity (and low transaction costs) and delivering environmental benefits. Transaction costs were factored into the planning and prioritisation processes developed. For example, public and private transaction costs are accounted for in the calculation of benefit:cost ratios and in the choice of policy mechanisms. There are diverse roles that transaction costs play in the processes of developing, implementing and influencing environmental policy programmes. A key observation is that appropriate strategic investment in transaction costs can improve decisions and increase net benefits from an environmental programme. A well-designed decision process can involve incurring transaction costs at one stage in order to save transaction costs at a later stage.

Keywords: Transaction costs; Policy mechanism choice; Benefit:costs analysis; Prioritisation; Planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800912004752
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Improving environmental decisions: a transaction-costs story (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:88:y:2013:i:c:p:244-252

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.11.025

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().