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An Environmental Competition Statute, David M. Driesen
An Environmental Competition Statute, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This chapter from a forthcoming Cambridge Press book, Beyond Environmental Law, proposes emulating free market dynamics with a new regulatory instrument, the Environmental Competition Statute. This statute would authorize any polluter making a pollution reduction to require a dirtier competitor to reimburse it for the full cost of making this improvement along with a preset profit margin. This creates an economic dynamic similar to that prevailing in very competitive markets. In such markets, those who innovate in effect take money from those who do not, by taking over a portion of their market share. This statute similarly allows environmental innovators …
An Economic Dynamic Approach To The Infrastructure Commons, David M. Driesen
An Economic Dynamic Approach To The Infrastructure Commons, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This brief essay comments upon and extends Brett Frischman's idea of the infrastructure commons, i.e. that certain commons resources function as infrastructure. After suggesting some refinements of the infrastructure commons theory, this essay shows how an economic dynamic approach to law (see David M. Driesen, The Economic Dynamics of Environmental Law (MIT Press 2003) can help strengthen the case for proper management of the infrastructure commons, helping bolster the case for preserving the commons and identifying some of its limitations. The essay, like Professor Frischman's original article, applies infrastructure commons theory to both environmental and intellectual property resources.
Design, Trading, And Innovation, David M. Driesen
Design, Trading, And Innovation, David M. Driesen
College of Law - Faculty Scholarship
This article questions the conventional theory purporting to establish that environmental benefit trading encourages innovation better than comparable traditional regulation. It argues that the induced innovation hypothesis, that high costs encourage innovation, suggests that trading would lessen incentives for innovation by lowering the cost of complying with conventional approaches. The conventional theory relies upon the incentive emissions trading creates for polluters to make additional reductions in order to sell credits. But emissions trading also creates incentives for half of the pollution sources (the credit buyers) to make less reductions than they would under a traditional regulation. By focusing analysis only …