Market-based Approaches to Environmental Regulation

Economists argue that policymakers should take advantage of market principles in designing environmental regulations. Such market-based approaches – environmental taxes and cap-and-trade – use economic incentives to achieve environmental goals at lower costs. Market-based approaches have now become common due to near-unanimous advocacy by economists and early positive policy experiences. Despite this acceptance, policymakers have often merged market-based incentives onto existing non-market approaches resulting in a set of mixed policies whose economic properties are often difficult to unravel. Thus, even the most prominent market-based regulations contain many nonmarket elements. The authors review the economics literature on the rationale for and optimal design of environmental taxes and cap-and- trade systems. They then discuss the structure and economics of the major U.S. market-based policies.