Price-standard approach

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The term price-standard-approach , also standard-price-approach , describes environmental-political and -economic approaches that first set environmental goals politically and then try to comply with market-based instruments at minimal cost. Price-standard approaches do not pursue the goal of an optimal use of natural resources according to criteria of welfare economics , as is the case, for example, with the Pigou tax .

Approaches based on the price-standard approach generally have two stages: In a first step, politicians set the ecological standard , which can consist of compliance with environmental indicators such as maximum emissions or recycling quotas . The target sizes are usually below the actual size; means to pursue them, to limiting factor for economic actors to tighten . In a second step, a fee is levied per unit of damage ( environmental fee ) or a limited, tradable amount of an environmental good is introduced ( emissions trading ). Participants in markets will reduce the scarcity through pricessignals that they receive incentives to restrict the use or consumption of the environmental good. The environmental target is set exogenously in this procedure , only the achievement of the target is left to the markets from the point of view of cost efficiency or Pareto optimization (see cost-effectiveness analysis ).

It is a so-called second best solution, the external costs are usually not exactly internalized . In this way, price-standard approaches differ from ideas such as the Pigou tax, which include ecological goals in economic optimization and strive for a complete internalization of costs, but a barely achievable level of information from the state and an ethical, often problematic assessment of Nature and the environment require.

William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates proposed the price-standard approach as an alternative to the Pigou tax in a specialist article from 1971 ( The Use of Standards and Prices for Protection of the Environment ). They wanted to avoid the information and evaluation problems and pursue ecological goals in a cost-efficient manner, but these are no longer part of the optimization (“efficiency without optimality”). In this article, you initially only considered charges and environmental charges . The use of emissions trading systems, which they later considered, they called permits and standard .

While environmental taxes are always counted among the price-standard approaches , authors handle the classification of emissions trading systems very differently:

  • Following Baumol and Oates (1971), taxes are often only referred to as the price-standard approach or, synonymously, the standard-price approach , and emissions trading systems are not included.
  • Some authors use the term standard volume approach for emissions trading systems, because in emissions trading a fixed amount of tradable certificates, a so-called cap , is the standard set directly in the market.
  • Individual authors consider both tax solutions and emissions trading to be standard price approaches.
  • Individual authors use the order of the sub-words to indicate the size that is set by politics in the market: Price-standard approach corresponds to the usual usage, politics sets a price, the amount of a fee, and thus aims indirectly via the market , the standard as the crowd target. The standard price approach, on the other hand, in this case means that politicians set the standard as the maximum amount and that the price is established in compliance with the maximum amount on the market - as applies to emissions trading.

A classic example of a measure based on the price-standard approach is the Clean Air Act , a clean air law in the USA. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initially set maximum concentrations for air pollutants. Then she developed a regulatory approach to meet these goals.

literature

  • William J. Baumol and Wallace E. Oates: The Use of Standards and Prices for Protection of the Environment . In: The Swedish Journal of Economics . tape 73 , no. 1 , March 1971, p. 42-54 , doi : 10.2307 / 3439132 ( online [PDF]).
  • Hans Wiesmeth : Environmental Economics . 2003, The Price Standard Approach, p. 155-172 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-56088-0_10 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gloria E. Helfand, Peter Berck and Tim Maull: The Theory of Pollution Policy . In: K.–G. Mäler and JR Vincent (Eds.): Handbook of Environmental Economics . tape 1 . Elsevier Science BV, 2003, 5.3. Cost-effectiveness: Least cost achievement of a policy target, p. 270 .
  2. ^ A b Maureen L. Cropper and Wallace E. Oates: Environmental Economics: A Survey . In: Journal of Economic Literature . tape 30 , no. 2 , June 1992, pp. 685-686 .
  3. ↑ Examples:
    • Eberhard Feess: Price-standard approach. In: Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon. Springer Gabler Verlag, accessed on January 17, 2016 .
    • Alfred Endres: Environmental Economics . W. Kolhammer, 2013, Part Three: Standard-Oriented Instruments of Environmental Policy, B.II. Levies, p. 131 .
    • Dieter Brümmerhoff: Finance . 10th edition. Oldenbourg, 2011, p. 76-77 .
  4. ↑ For example: Fritz Söllner: The history of economic thinking . 3. Edition. Springer Gabler, 2012, p. 120-121 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-28178-5 .
  5. ↑ For example: Hans Wiesmeth: Umweltökonomie . 2003, p. 155-172 .
  6. ↑ For example: Charles B. Blankart : Public Finance in Democracy: An Introduction to Public Finance . Vahlen, 2012, p. 569-581 .