 Environmental policy, government, and the marketOxford Review of Economic Policy, 2010, vol. 26, issue 2, 117-136 Abstract: Environmental policy is made in a context of both market failure and government failure. On the one hand, leaving environmental protection to the free market, relying on notions of corporate social responsibility and altruistic consumer and shareholder preferences, will not deliver optimal results. On the other hand, nationalizing the delivery of environmental protection is likely to fail because nation states rarely have the depth and quality of information required to instruct all the relevant agents to make appropriate decisions. Thus, as for many areas of policy, appropriate models of environmental intervention will lie between these two extremes. While it is impossible to specify general rules concerning the precise form of intervention, in part because the type of intervention depends upon value judgements, this paper sets out some of the considerations that are particular to environmental policy, and explores several principles for policy design, including information, coordination, and principal--agent problems, with a particular focus on the international context. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press. Date: 2010 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:26:y:2010:i:2:p:117-136 Access Statistics for this article Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited |
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