Growing State-Federal Conflicts in Environmental Policy: The Role of Market-Based Regulation
Abstract
In recent years, cases in which state governments chose to override federal environmental regulation with tighter regulations of their own have become increasingly common, even for pollutants that have substantial spillovers across states. This paper argues that this change arose at least in part because of a shift in the type of regulation used at the federal level, from command-and-control regulation toward more incentive-based regulation. Under an incentive-based federal regulation, a state imposing a tighter regulation will bear only part of the additional cost, and thus has more incentive to tighten regulation than it does under federal command-and-control. This difference helps to explain observed patterns of regulation. In addition, it has implications for the choice of regulatory instruments. For a pollutant that causes both local and spillover damage, a federal pollution tax is likely to yield a more efficient outcome than federal command-and-control policy or a federal system of tradable permits.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 16184.Length:
Date of creation: Jul 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16184
Note: EEE PE
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Related research
Keywords:Other versions of this item:
- Williams, Roberton C., 2012. "Growing state–federal conflicts in environmental policy: The role of market-based regulation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1092-1099.
- Williams III, Roberton C., 2010. "Growing State-Federal Conflicts in Environmental Policy: The Role of Market-Based Regulation," Working paper 619, Regulation2point0.
- D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
- H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
- H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
- Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy
References
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- Peter Cramton & Steven Stoft, 2010.
"Price is a Better Climate Commitment,"
Papers of Peter Cramton
10pbcc, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 2010.
- Peter Cramton & Steven Stoft, 2010. "Price Is a Better Climate Commitment," The Economists' Voice, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 3.
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Handbook of Environmental Economics,
in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 8, pages 325-354
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- William M. Shobe & Dallas Burtraw, 2012.
"Rethinking Environmental Federalism In A Warming World,"
Climate Change Economics (CCE),
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(04), pages 1250018-1-1.
- William Shobe & Dallas Burtraw, 2012. "Rethinking Environmental Federalism in a Warming World," Working Papers 2012-01, Center for Economic and Policy Studies.
- Shobe, William M. & Burtraw, Dallas, 2012. "Rethinking Environmental Federalism in a Warming World," Discussion Papers dp-12-04, Resources For the Future.
- Gordon, Roger H. & Cullen, Julie Berry, 2012. "Income redistribution in a Federal system of governments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1100-1109.
- Boadway, Robin & Tremblay, Jean-François, 2012. "Reassessment of the Tiebout model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 1063-1078.
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