ACTORS, IDEOLOGY, MARKETS - NEOCLASSICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON ENVIRONMENTAL-POLICY

This essay is a critical examination of three well-known textbooks of neoclassical environmental economics concerning their treatment of environmental policy. Dynamic efficiency in the sense of cost-benefit analysis of a monetary kind is not the value-neutral instrument to project and policy evaluation it purports to be. Measuring willingness to pay and other market values does not solve many problems if the issue is one of world view, ideology and life-styles. As an alternative to conventional approaches, a more open attitude to various ideological standpoints in society is recommended. Neoclassical textbooks emphasize the government as the main agent in environmental policy and classify policy instruments as either belonging to the command-and-control or the economic incentives category. A broadening of perspective is here suggested in the sense of including many more agents of environmental policy; for instance, business companies and public interest groups. Environmental policy starts rather at the level of individuals than governments. A distinction is made between monetary and non-monetary incentives and disincentives as ways of influencing behaviour, and alternatives to the neoclassical view of man, business and markets are suggested for purposes of understanding social change.