The Handbook of Environmental Voluntary Agreements: Design, Implementation and Evaluation Issues

· Environment & Policy Book 43 · Springer Science & Business Media
Ebook
395
Pages
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

EDOARDOCROCI IEFE - Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy Voluntary approaches in environmental policy represent a “third wave” of regulation in the environmental field. “Command and control” was the first wave. Its core is based on uniform emission standards, the respect of which needs to be enforced through extensive monitoring and severe sanctions. The expected cost of sanction for non-compliance, calculated as its amount multiplied for the probability to be caught, must be superior to the benefits of non-compliance, in order to let the sanction be effective. As the benefits of non-compliance can vary among firms, sanctions need to be very high in order to be effective. In fact sanctions are ordinary correlated to environmental damage and not to the benefits of non-compliance. But very high sanctions can be difficult to enforce as they appear unfair and can lead to dramatic consequences on firms and workers, up to shut-downs of plants. Ambient standards reduce these problems, but oblige the regulator to know a huge amount of information, regarding the specific contribution of each polluter to the polluted body. Information is difficult to obtain because of asymmetric information and costly to produce because it requires large and skilled regulating and enforcing organizations. Nevertheless complex regulation is the base of any environmental policy framework, as it allows the policy maker to fully exercise its power of composition of various interests in a relatively transparent way. Economic instruments were the second wave.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.