Abstract
Environmental economics evolved in the 1970s. A recurring theme in this new sub‐discipline of economics was the opposition of incentive‐based regimes and regulatory policies as competing approaches to industrial pollution control, with economists claiming that the former were more efficient. Both economists and non‐economists have since come to the conclusion that the incentives versus regulations image is conceptually flawed and does not square with the facts. This article traces the origins of ‘incentives versus regulations’ to the polarised United States debate over environmental policies as well as to the influence of mainstream economic theory on environmental economics.
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