Command-and-control vs. Incentives

More reading on command-and-control vs Incentive-based policies:

Harrington, W., & Morgenstern, R. D., 2007. Economic incentives versus command and control: What’s the best approach for solving environmental problems? In: Acid in the Environment (pp. 233-240). Springer US.

 

Austin, D. 1999. Economic Instruments for Pollution Control: A Brief Overview, World Resources Institute, Washington DC.

Here is a link to a report on the use of economic incentives for pollution control in the US. You can use the "quick links" on the right to navigate the document. 
Read about international experience with incentives here

Environmental Defense Fund has a short piece on how the use of incentives was a powerful solution to addressing acid rain.

The Environmental Literacy Council has a nice short article on standards vs. incentives.
Here's more from the World Bank.

Here is a short article on economic incentives for water quality management from the WHO.

Here is a great article by Robert Stavins on the topic.

Lots of great information in this report on Economic Incentives for Pollution Control from UNEP.

Costs and benefits of fracking

A new study in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources summarizes the environmental costs and benefits of fracking, based on a review of 165 academic research articles and databases.  Read a summary here at Science Daily.  The full article is available here.

The article highlights some important tradeoffs, and does a nice job dispelling some myths. Perhaps the most important point is that there is still a lot that we don't know about this controversial procedure.

What do we know?  Fracking uses a lot of water, but the use of natural gas instead of coal, nuclear or ethanol saves a lot of water.  Groundwater contamination is possible (and not as likely as you might think according to the study), but contamination of the air with C02 is decreased significantly.

Fracking will most certainly continue. A massive source of energy is not going to be ignored. Basic supply and demand tells us that this will delay the transition to renewables, perhaps for a long time. The principle questions are what to do with the waste water and whether research into the costs and benefits can take place at a rate that parallels the growing demand for cheap energy.

Welcome fall 2014 students

Welcome to the Natural Resource Economic blog!

This blog is used almost exclusively by my students and former students for the purposes of discussing current events related to topics in natural resource econ.

This semester there are about 50 students at UNC Wilmington and 9 students from CERMES UWI- Cave Hill.

I hope that you find my posts interesting and relevant. Your contributions should be well thought-out and objective. I hope you also can provide links to additional reading when you see the opportunity.