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发表于 2010-4-8 10:51:00
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Environmental economics 环境经济学
Environmental economics is a subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues.
Central to environmental economics is the concept of market failure. Market failure means that markets fail to allocate resources efficiently.
Common forms of market failure include externalities, non excludability and non rivalry.
Externality:the basic idea is that an externality exists when a person makes a choice that affects other people that are not accounted for in the market price. For instance, pollution.
Common property and non-exclusion: When it is too costly to exclude people from accessing a rivalrous environmental resource, market allocation is likely to be inefficient. The basic problem is that if people ignore the scarcity value of the commons, they can end up expending too much effort, over harvesting a resource (e.g., a fishery). leading to environmental degradation. Tragedy of the commons.
Public goods and non-rivalry: Public goods are another type of market failure, in which the market price does not capture the social benefits of its provision. For example, protection from the risks of climate change.A country's incentive to invest in carbon abatement is reduced because it can "free ride" off the efforts of other countries.Public goods can be under-provided by the market because people might conceal their preferences for the good, but still enjoy the benefits without paying for them.
Solutions advocated to correct such externalities include:
Environmental regulations:"Command and control" regulation often applies uniform emissions limits on polluters, even though each firm has different costs for emissions reductions.
Quotas on pollution:Pollution reductions should be achieved by way of tradeable emissions permits, which if freely traded may ensure that reductions in pollution are achieved at least cost.
Taxes on pollution
Better defined property rights. The Coase Theorem states that assigning property rights will lead to an optimal solution, regardless of who receives them, if transaction costs are trivial and the number of parties negotiating is limited. |
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