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Publications [#266095] of Lori S. Bennear

Book Chapters

  1. Bennear, LS; Coglianese, C, Flexible Environmental Regulation, in The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Environmental Policy, edited by Kamieniecki, S; Kraft, M (November, 2012), pp. 582-604, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199744671
    (last updated on 2024/03/27)

    Abstract:
    “Flexible regulation” might sound like an oxymoron but it has become a widely accepted catch phrase for pragmatic regulation that promises the achievement of important public policy objectives at low cost. Given the growing interest in flexible regulation in recent decades, we consider in this paper what can be learned from the U.S. experience with flexible environmental regulation. We consider four types of flexible regulation: (1) flexible commands, such as performance standards, information disclosure rules, and management-based regulations; (2) flexible targets, such as offsets, bubbles, and trading; (3) flexible consequences, such as voluntary programs and agreements; and (4) flexible regulators, such as systems of self-regulation and self-policing. Researchers have demonstrated that many flexible approaches can sometimes work, to some degree, but just as flexible policies can vary in form, we find that they also vary in results. What remains, we argue, is to determine whether the marginal, and at times only potential, gains from flexible forms of regulation are enough to justify their increased use.


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