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

more and at lower cost.

Third, legislators and EPA analysts write the command-and-control regulations, and so they are subject to

compromises in the political process. Existing firms often argue (and lobby) that stricter environmental

standards should not apply to them, only to new firms that wish to start production. Consequently, real-world

environmental laws are full of fine print, loopholes, and exceptions.

Although critics accept the goal of reducing pollution, they question whether command-and-control regulation

is the best way to design policy tools for accomplishing that goal. A different approach is the use of market-

Access for free at openstax.org
12.3 • Market-Oriented Environmental Tools 287

oriented tools, which we discussed in the next section.

12.3 Market-Oriented Environmental Tools

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
{"source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "total_pages": 597, "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)", "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:24:38.309401", "file_size_mb": 26.99, "file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "file_type": ".pdf", "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a", "creator": "PDFMiner", "batch_upload": true, "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf"}