A Model of Benchmarking Regulation: Revisiting the Efficiency of Environmental Standards

Joschka Gerigk, Ian MacKenzie and Markus Ohndorf

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2015, vol. 62, issue 1, 59-82

Abstract: The conventional economic argument favors the use of market-based instruments over ‘command-and-control’ regulation. This viewpoint, however, is often limited in the description and characteristics of the latter; namely, environmental standards are often portrayed as lacking structured abatement incentives. Yet contemporary forms of command-and-control regulation, such as standards stipulated via benchmarking, have the potential to be efficient. We provide a first formal analysis of environmental standards based on performance benchmarks. We show that under specific conditions, standards can provide efficient incentives to improve environmental performance. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Environmental standards; Command-and-control regulation; Benchmarking; Relative performance mechanism; Contests; L51; Q50; Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: A model of benchmarking regulation: revisiting the efficiency of environmental standards (2014)
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DOI: 10.1007/s10640-014-9815-7

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