IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/02-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Institutions and Decision Making for Sustainable Development

Author

Listed:
  • Basil Sharp

    (University of Auckland)

Abstract

Economic theory provides a coherent framework for analysing the elements of growth and sustainable development. Robust policies and appropriate institutional structures are essential to achieving sustainable development. Environmental problems are rooted in failed markets and their resolution requires government taking some kind of action – to establish property rights, set standards of liability, apply polluter pays taxes, or regulate. There is ample evidence showing that market based instruments can achieve the same environmental outcome at considerably less cost relative to command and control. Rational policy must seriously consider the use of market-based instruments. A framework for considering the quality of institutional structures vis-à-vis achieving sustainable development is presented. The framework is applied to aspects of the Resource Management Act 1991. Although the Act aims to promote sustainable management it is the primary legal foundation for sustainable development policy. One result of the Act was to devolve a great deal of environmental management and policy to local government. To a limited extent the Act is permissive and creates opportunities for local and regional government to find effective and efficient ways of achieving environmental outcomes that suit their communities. There is a clear preference for command and control in situations where statute provides a legal framework for market based instruments. But the options for using market-based instruments are limited. There are instances where attempts by regional administrators to implement market-based instruments are thwarted either by statute or by coordination difficulties at higher levels of government. Barriers to using market-based instruments are identified along with suggestions for institutional reform.

Suggested Citation

  • Basil Sharp, 2002. "Institutions and Decision Making for Sustainable Development," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/20, New Zealand Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:02/20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2007-09/twp02-20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markusen James R. & Morey Edward R. & Olewiler Nancy D., 1993. "Environmental Policy when Market Structure and Plant Locations Are Endogenous," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 69-86, January.
    2. Van Den Bergh, Roger, 1996. "Economic criteria for applying the subsidiarity principle in the European community: The case of competition policy," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 363-383, September.
    3. Mike Young & Darla Hatton MacDonald, 2000. "Interstate Water Trading: a 2-year Review," Natural Resource Management Economics 00_001, Policy and Economic Research Unit, CSIRO Land and Water, Adelaide, Australia.
    4. Adam B. Jaffe et al., 1995. "Environmental Regulation and the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 132-163, March.
    5. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    6. Sandmo, Agnar, 2000. "The Public Economics of the Environment," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198297987.
    7. Bourgeon, Jean-Marc & Jayet, Pierre-Alain & Picard, Pierre, 1995. "An incentive approach to land set-aside programs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 1487-1509, October.
    8. Edward A. Parson, 2000. "Environmental Trends and Environmental Governance in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 26(s2), pages 123-143, August.
    9. O'Neil, William & David, Martin & Moore, Christina & Joeres, Erhard, 1983. "Transferable discharge permits and economic efficiency: The fox river," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 346-355, December.
    10. Sharp, Basil MH, 1997. "From regulated access to transferable harvesting rights: Policy insights from New Zealand," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 501-517, November.
    11. Libecap, Gary D., 1986. "Property rights in economic history: Implications for research," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 227-252, July.
    12. John D. McClelland & John K. Horowitz, 1999. "The Costs of Water Pollution Regulation in the Pulp and Paper Industry," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 75(2), pages 220-232.
    13. Richard Schmalensee & Paul L. Joskow & A. Denny Ellerman & Juan Pablo Montero & Elizabeth M. Bailey, 1998. "An Interim Evaluation of Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Trading," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 53-68, Summer.
    14. Myles,Gareth D., 1995. "Public Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521497695, October.
    15. Seskin, Eugene P. & Anderson, Robert Jr. & Reid, Robert O., 1983. "An empirical analysis of economic strategies for controlling air pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 112-124, June.
    16. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    17. Caillaud, B. & Jullien, B. & Picard, P., 1996. "National vs European incentive policies: Bargaining, information and coordination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 91-111, January.
    18. Easter, K William & Rosegrant, Mark W & Dinar, Ariel, 1999. "Formal and Informal Markets for Water: Institutions, Performance, and Constraints," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 14(1), pages 99-116, February.
    19. Kevin Guerin, 2002. "Subsidiarity: Implications for New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/03, New Zealand Treasury.
    20. Stephen Dovers, 2001. "Institutions for Sustainability," Economics and Environment Network Working Papers 0101, Australian National University, Economics and Environment Network.
    21. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1983. "An Analysis of the Principal-Agent Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(1), pages 7-45, January.
    22. Batstone, C. J. & Sharp, B. M. H., 2003. "Minimum information management systems and ITQ fisheries management," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(2, Supple), pages 492-504, March.
    23. Hartwick, John M., 1990. "Natural resources, national accounting and economic depreciation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 291-304, December.
    24. Gilbert, Guy & Picard, Pierre, 1996. "Incentives and optimal size of local jurisdictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 19-41, January.
    25. Basil M. H. Sharp, 2001. "Sustainable Development: Environment and Economic Framework Integration," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/27, New Zealand Treasury.
    26. Maloney, Michael T. & Yandle, Bruce, 1984. "Estimation of the cost of air pollution control regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 244-263, September.
    27. Suzi Kerr & Megan Claridge & Dominic Milicich, 1998. "Devolution and the New Zealand Resource Management Act," Treasury Working Paper Series 98/07, New Zealand Treasury.
    28. Anderson, Terry L & Hill, Peter J, 1975. "The Evolution of Property Rights: A Study of the American West," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 163-179, April.
    29. Jock R. Anderson, 1994. "Environmental economics," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 11(1), pages 93-94, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hawke, Richard, 2006. "Improving the Water Allocation Framework in New Zealand," Occasional Papers 06/9, Ministry of Economic Development, New Zealand.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Newell, Richard G & Stavins, Robert N, 2003. "Cost Heterogeneity and the Potential Savings from Market-Based Policies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 43-59, January.
    2. Stavins, Robert & Newell, Richard, 2000. "Abatement-Cost Heterogeneity and Anticipated Savings from Market-Based Environmental Policies," Working Paper Series rwp00-006, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    3. Revesz, Richard & Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Environmental Law and Policy," Working Paper Series rwp04-023, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Pizer, William A. & Kopp, Raymond, 2005. "Calculating the Costs of Environmental Regulation," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1307-1351, Elsevier.
    5. Natalie Brady, 2002. "Striking a Balance: Centralised and Decentralised Decisions in Government," Treasury Working Paper Series 02/15, New Zealand Treasury.
    6. Stavins, Robert, 2001. "Lessons From the American Experiment With Market-Based Environmental Policies," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-53, Resources for the Future.
    7. Stavins, Robert, 2004. "Environmental Economics," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-54, Resources for the Future.
    8. Cropper, Maureen L & Oates, Wallace E, 1992. "Environmental Economics: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 675-740, June.
    9. Isaksson, Lena Hoglund, 2005. "Abatement costs in response to the Swedish charge on nitrogen oxide emissions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 102-120, July.
    10. Roger Fouquet, 2012. "Economics of Energy and Climate Change: Origins, Developments and Growth," Working Papers 2012-08, BC3.
    11. Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, 2014. "On the Definition of Public Goods. Assessing Richard A. Musgrave's contribution," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 14004, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    12. Stavins, Robert, 2003. "Market-Based Environmental Policies: What Can We Learn from U.S. Experience and Related Research?," Working Paper Series rwp03-031, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    13. Cerin, Pontus, 2006. "Bringing economic opportunity into line with environmental influence: A discussion on the Coase theorem and the Porter and van der Linde hypothesis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 209-225, February.
    14. Harris,Colin & Cai,Meina & Murtazashvili,Ilia & Murtazashvili,Jennifer Brick, 2020. "The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108969055, October.
    15. Helfand, Gloria E. & Berck, Peter & Maull, Tim, 2003. "The theory of pollution policy," Handbook of Environmental Economics, in: K. G. Mäler & J. R. Vincent (ed.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 249-303, Elsevier.
    16. Sovacool, Benjamin K., 2015. "The political economy of pollution markets: Historical lessons for modern energy and climate planners," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 943-953.
    17. Cai,Yongyang & Selod,Harris & Steinbuks,Jevgenijs, 2015. "Urbanization and property rights," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7486, The World Bank.
    18. Bickenbach, Frank, 1999. "Regulierung und Wettbewerb im Bereich der Netzinfrastrukturen: Begründung, Regeln und Institutionen," Kiel Working Papers 910, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Kim, Jongwook & Mahoney, Joseph T., 2005. "Appropriating Economic Rents from Resources: An Integrative Property Rights and Resource-Based Approach," Working Papers 05-0123, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    20. Herath, Deepananda P.B. & Weersink, Alfons, 1999. "Transaction Costs, Economic Instruments And Environmental Policies," 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN 21588, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sustainable development; institutions and decision-making; market-based incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P28 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Natural Resources; Environment
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:02/20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSS Web and Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.