This paper is a draft of a chapter for a forthcoming book, Public Choice and Public Law, edited by Daniel Farber and Anne Joseph O'Connell, to be published by Edward Elgar. This chapter reviews the literature on the selection of regulatory policy instruments, from both normative and positive...

The idea of cost-benefit analysis has been spreading internationally for centuries — at least since an American named Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter in 1772 to his British friend, Joseph Priestley, recommending that Priestley weigh the pros and cons of a difficult decision in what Franklin...

A central issue in environmental law is the choice among regulatory instruments. From Pigou to Coase to the present, scholars have debated the relative merits of liability rules, property rules, technology standards, taxes, subsidies, and tradeable allowances. An emerging scholarly consensus in...