Dimensions: 8.25'' x 5.25'' 32 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: April 1998 Paperback ISBN: 0844771163 Price: $ 9.95 Add to Cart   Examination Copies

Making Environmental Policy brings to the bitter, divisive, and passionate debate on the proper direction of environmental policy the views of two prominent economists. Irwin Stelzer sees the debate as an almost cosmic clash between underlying assumptions about the world, with conflict centering on economic growth, income distribution, and government control of individual behavior. Paul Portney, in contrast, analyzes the issues from a rationalist point of view, with its emphasis on calculating the costs and benefits of particular policies, lease-cost approaches to decision making, and environmental federalism.

Making Environmental Policy is one in a series of new AEI studies related to the globalization of environmental policy. These studies will focus on specific issues, such as global climate change, and on the new institutional arrangements required to deal with them.

Irwin M. Stelzer is director of regulatory policy studies at AEI and the coauthor of The Antitrust Laws, now in its third edition. Paul R. Portney is president of Resources for the Future and has published widely on the costs and benefits of environmental regulation.