环境管制收益和成本的评估与分配

The Measurement and Distribution of Environmental Regulation's Benefits and Costs

环境质量标准设定得是否合适,关键在于能否对环境管制的收益和成本做出准确的评估。在过去三十多年里,环境经济学得到了快速的发展,环境经济学家设计了新的方法,并做了大量的实证研究,来测度实际的或被提议的环境管制的收益和成本。然而,评估管制成本本身并不是一项简单的任务,环境经济学家将主要关注放在了总账的收益一边。关注的中心是,评估非市场物品收益的方法论的发展。这些方法可归纳为间接市场法和直接调查法两大类。本文对这两种方法,以及它们在评估环境管制收益和成本方面的应用,进行了评述。

Have environmental quality standards been set at appropriate levels？ The answer to this question requires that we measure the benefits and costs of environmental regulation. Environmental economics has been a busy field over the past three decades. Environmental economists have devised new methods for the valuation of benefits and costs from improved environmental quality, and they have undertaken numerous empirical studies to measure the costs and benefits of actual or proposed environmental programs. While the measurement of regulation costs is itself no simple task, environmental economists have turned most of their attention to the benefit side of the ledger. Of central concern has been the development of methodologies to measure the benefits of goods that are not sold in markets. These techniques fall into two categories ： indirect market methods and direct questioning approaches. This paper shall review both approaches, and then discuss the application of these methods to valuing and distributing the benefits and costs of environmental regulation.