Choosing Environmental Policy Tools: Theoretical Cautions and Practical Considerations

This working paper contains a review and analysis of environmental policy tools in Latin America. It contains a review of the instruments themselves and their properties are discussed in both static and dynamic contexts. The report brings together the institutional and more narrowly economic material and attempts to offer general guidance on types of instruments that seem most promising in various combinations of circumstances. These recommendations are also contrasted with those from some other authors, to the extent that is possible. The penultimate section of the report contains summary material on efforts at environmental management in a few Latin American countries, especially on efforts to institute economic incentive systems. The concluding section contains both a summary of the major arguments and conclusions from earlier sections and some speculation about the possibilities for using environmental policy design as a way of influencing institutional evolution within developing countries.