Economic Incentives for Pollution Control

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With the current high level of interest in economic incentive mechanisms for environmental management, it is useful to examine the record to date. Over the past 20 years, federal, state, and local authorities as well as many foreign nations have enacted a diverse array of environmental incentive mechanisms. This report presents one of the most comprehensive surveys available of these mechanisms both in the United States and other countries, but attempts to go beyond enumerating them by examining several key issues:

How well have these instruments performed?
What can be learned from the record that will assist in the formulation of new mechanisms?
How economically efficient or cost-effective are these mechanisms in achieving the goals of environmental management?
What have been their environmental effects?
Why is it that the theoretical gains from economic instruments seldom are observed in practice and what can be done to improve this record?

This report is an update and extension of a previous 1992 report, including many additional economic incentive instruments. You can also download this 1997 report in Adobe Acrobat format rather than read it here online if you wish. You should be aware, however, that the downloadable version does not incorporate some improvements and changes that have recently been incorporated in this online version. A more recent version of both the 1992 and this 1997 report was published by EPA in 2001. The 2001 report does not include any discussion of the foreign experience with incentives, but in November, 2004 a report on International Experiences with Economic Incentives for Protecting the Environment was published by EPA.

Use the "Quick Links" in the upper right to browse this report; the links denote how records will be sorted, though the individual records are consistently displayed regardless of sorting. Additionally, a search box appears at the top of each sorting page. There are also a number of other browsable reports available on this Website.

THE UNITED STATES EXPERIENCE WITH ECONOMIC INCENTIVES IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION CONTROL POLICY
by Robert C. Anderson and Andrew Q. Lohof
Resource Consulting Associates

with the assistance of Alan Carlin
Office of Economy and Environment
Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. 20460
1997
Prepared under EPA Cooperative Agreement CR822795-01 with the Office of Economy and Environment, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. 20460

Project Officer Alan Carlin
Office of Economy and Environment
Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. 20460

Environmental Law Institute
1616 P Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20036

Economic Incentives for Pollution Control

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