IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-1-4020-9690-7_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Complex Policy Choices Regarding Agricultural Externalities: Efficiency, Equity and Acceptability

In: Institutions and Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Clem Tisdell

    (The University of Queensland)

Abstract

A feature of the research contribution of Konrad Hagedorn is his proposals for the integration of economic, social and political dimensions of agricultural policy. His holistic approach involves, in part, an extension of new institutionalism to public policy. This article identifies a number of difficulties that arise in choosing public policies for regulating externalities generated by agricultural activity. Firstly, it is noted that finding an economically efficient agricultural policy can be difficult because the functions involved can be irregular and may involve features associated with the mathematics of catastrophe. This adds to the complexity of public decision-making and increases the bounds on rational choice. Secondly, in light of the research results of behavioural economists and other considerations, it is shown that efficient economic solutions to resource allocation are not independent of the distribution of property rights, inevitably requiring consideration of whether the distribution of these rights is equitable. Thirdly, the importance of institutional structures for the transaction costs (or more generally administrative costs) of implementing agricultural policy are stressed and illustrated. Fourthly, the political acceptability or feasibility of implementing policies is demonstrated to be a relevant consideration in choosing agricultural policies, and it is noted that these are influenced by existing social structures and cultural factors. Some of these issues are briefly illustrated by public policies (such as those implied by the International Convention on Biological Diversity) designed or intended to extend property rights in genetic materials.

Suggested Citation

  • Clem Tisdell, 2009. "Complex Policy Choices Regarding Agricultural Externalities: Efficiency, Equity and Acceptability," Springer Books, in: Volker Beckmann & Martina Padmanabhan (ed.), Institutions and Sustainability, chapter 5, pages 83-106, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4020-9690-7_5
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-9690-7_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Clement A. Tisdell, 2015. "Sustaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functions," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 15296.
    2. Tisdell, Clement A., 2012. "Conserving Forest Wildlife and Other Ecosystem Services: Opportunity Costs and The Valuation of Alternative Logging Regimes," Economics, Ecology and Environment Working Papers 126230, University of Queensland, School of Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4020-9690-7_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.