for America’s cleaner air and water in recent decades. However, economists have pointed out three difficulties

with command-and-control environmental regulation.

First, command-and-control regulation offers no incentive to improve the quality of the environment beyond
the standard set by a particular law. Once firms meet the standard, polluters have zero incentive to do better.

Second, command-and-control regulation is inflexible. It usually requires the same standard for all polluters,

and often the same pollution-control technology as well. This means that command-and-control regulation

draws no distinctions between firms that would find it easy and inexpensive to meet the pollution standard—or

to reduce pollution even further—and firms that might find it difficult and costly to meet the standard. Firms

have no reason to rethink their production methods in fundamental ways that might reduce pollution even

more and at lower cost.
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