Microeconomics › Section L · Environmental protection and negative externalities › Topic L.4
Weighing the benefits and costs of environmental laws
Every environmental law buys its cleanup with resources that had other uses, so the honest question is never 'is clean air good?' but 'is THIS law's cleanup worth ITS cost?' The tools for answering - benefit categories, marginal analysis, and sober lessons about estimates - are this topic.
In this topic
- The question behind every rule
- Four kinds of environmental benefit
- Valuing the priceless
- Worked example: where to stop protecting
- The measured verdict on real laws
- The hardest number: the social cost of carbon
- Fairness: who bears the burden
- Evidence from practice: congestion pricing
- Evidence from practice: small charges, big changes
- Worked example: judging a proposed rule
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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