Emissions taxes, tradeable emission permits and voluntary compliance policies are becoming the instruments of choice in controlling environmental problems at the national and international level. Careful design of these policies in second-best environments is a very important factor for their...

The precautionary principle (PP) applied to environmental policy stipulates that, in the presence of physical uncertainty, society must take robust preventive action to guard against worst-case outcomes. It follows that the higher the degree of uncertainty, the more aggressive this preventive...