This chapter provides an economic perspective of environmental law and policy with regard to both normative and positive dimensions. It begins with an examination of the central problem in environmental regulation: the tendency of pollution generators in an unconstrained market economy to...

Protected areas are a cornerstone of forest conservation in developing countries. Yet we know little about their effects on forest cover change or the socioeconomic status of local communities, and even less about the relationship between these effects. This paper assesses whether “win-win”...

Protected areas are a cornerstone of forest conservation in developing countries. Yet we know little about their effects on forest cover change or the socioeconomic status of local communities, and even less about the relationship between these effects. This paper assesses whether “win-win”...

Communities in the United States are showing increasing interest in the use of forests, wetlands, and other natural areas to provide protection against extreme events. As the climate changes and such events become more frequent and/or more severe, investments in the conservation of natural areas...

We examine the effect of the introduction of uniform water-charging for aquifer management and provide evidence using a survey-based choice experiment of agricultural water users in rural Tunisia. Theoretically, we show that the implementation of the proposed second-best regulation would result...

In this paper, the second installment of our three-part study on the development of brownfields policy in the state of Wisconsin, we use case studies to explore the implementation of the policy at three scales: 1) two statewide initiatives, the Voluntary Party Liability Exemption process and the...

National government-funded payments for environmental services (PES) programs often lack sustainable financing and fail to target payments to providers of important environmental services. In principle, these problems can be mitigated by supplementing government financing with contributions from...

As the third paper in our three-part series on Wisconsin brownfields, this paper reports the results of a survey on the objectives of brownfields redevelopment, constraints to the redevelopment, the role of the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and institutional controls. The 260...

In this paper, the first part of our three-part study on the development of brownfields policy in Wisconsin, we examine the regulatory history of the brownfields policy. We start with the 1978 Hazardous Substance Spill Law, the antecedent to the brownfields regulatory reform of the 1990s, and...

This paper provides an overview of the cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated properties known as “brownfields.” It has three principal parts. First, we introduce the brownfields phenomenon and its drivers, drawing on the body of available empirical evidence to discuss characteristics of...