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The Use of Markets to Control Pollution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Théodore C. Bergstrom
Théodore C. Bergstrom*
Affiliation:
(Washington University, St. Louis)
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Extract

The primary purpose of this paper is to study the extent to which prices and markets can be employed as means towards efficient control of pollution. The model which is examined is, however, sufficiently general to apply to any sort of externalities among producers and consumers, including classical public goods. In the first section we consider the problem of efficient means of achieving a specified standard of environmental quality. We then briefly discuss the more difficult problem of choosing the environmental quality standards themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 403 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1973 

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Footnotes

*

This paper is based on research undertaken while the author was a visitor at CORE in Louvain, Belgium. The research was carried out whithin the project “Analyse économique de la lutte contre la pollution des eaux”, under contract between the Université Catholique de Louvain and the Belgium Ministry of Scientific Policy; the latter project is itself part of the “Premier programme national de Recherche et de développement sur l'environnement physique et biologique”, administered by Service de la Politique et de la Programmation Scientifiques. The notion of an isomorphism between an exchange economy and an economy with fixed levels aggregate externalities was first suggested to me by Professor Henry Tulkens of CORE who drew a very clever Edgeworth box. For this and many other stimulating conversations, I am most grateful to Professor Tulkens and his colleagues at CORE

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