The Environmental Shakedown: Can Markets and Property Rights Really Improve Environmental Quality?

 The Federalist Society Presents

The Environmental Shakedown

Can Markets and Property Rights Really

Improve Environmental Quality?

Tuesday, 2.28 ·12:00 · K1E · FREE JIMMY JOHNS

Dr. Bruce Yandle, Clemson University· Professor Amy Sinden, Temple Law

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Since time out of mind, human communities, like hummingbird societies, have faced a property rights challenge:  How to ration, protect and enhance the biological envelope that sustains life.  Sometime referred to as the commons problem, related legal and economic issues have to do with defining and protecting property rights to environmental assets.  In short, the problem relates to building and maintaining legal institutions.  Typically in the industrialized world, the environment is managed by government using command-and-control regulation. There are explanation for this preference based on political economy arguments. Notable exceptions to this approach involve defining markets and transferable rights for environmental assets and use.  An exploration of experiences with markets offers insights into how environmental regulation might be improved and made more viable. 

 

DR. BRUCE YANDLE is dean emeritus of Clemson University Business School as well as a professor of economics emeritus. Dr. Yandle’s primary research interests are public choice, regulation, & free market environmentalism. Dr. Yandle is the author of numerous books, including Taking the Environment Seriously, The Political Limits of Environmental Regulation, Environmental Use & the Market, Land Rights, The Economics of Environmental Quality, & most recently, Common Sense & Common Law for the Environment. Dr. Yandle was a senior economist on the staff of the President's Council on Wage & Price Stability, where he reviewed & analyzed newly proposed regulations. He later served as the executive director of the Federal Trade Commission.

AMY SINDEN is a Professor at Temple Beasley School of Law specializing in environmental & property law. Her recent academic writings have criticized the misuse of economic theory in environmental law, arguing against the use of cost-benefit analysis in environmental standard setting & countering claims that private property rights can solve environmental problems in the absence of government regulation. Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Sinden served as senior counsel for Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, handling litigation on behalf of PennFuture & other citizens' & environmental groups. Prior to this position, Sinden was an attorney for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Seattle, Washington, where she litigated federal environmental cases focusing on natural resource issues. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Progressive Reform.