‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ asked the Roman poet Juvenal - ‘who will watch the watchers, who will guard the guardians?’ As legislative and regulatory processes around the globe progressively put greater emphasis on impact assessment and accountability, we ask: who oversees the...

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...

This paper addresses the choice of regulatory instrument for international control of global climate change. First, it examines the efficiency attributes of options including harmonized policy measures, international emissions taxes, and quantitative emissions reductions with internationally...

The regulation of health and environmental risks has generated transatlantic controversy concerning precaution and the precautionary principle (PP). Conventional wisdom sees the European Union endorsing the PP and proactively regulating uncertain risks, while the United States opposes the PP and...

Public choice theory sheds light on many aspects of legislation, regulation, and constitutional law and is critical to a sophisticated understanding of public policy. The editors of this landmark addition to the law and economics literature have organized the Handbook into four main areas of...