Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Environmental groups: Environmental groups are organizations advocating for environmental protection, conservation, and sustainability. They encompass non-profits, NGOs, and grassroots movements working on issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. See also Climate change, Climate damages, Environmental ethics._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Public Choice Theory on Environmental Groups - Dictionary of Arguments
Parisi I 184 Environmental Groups/Public Choice theory/Farber: collective action problems may allow concentrated minority interests such as monopolists to exploit diffuse majorities. Interest group theories predate public choice but have been a focal point of one prong of public choice scholarship (Eskridge, Frickey, and Garrett, 2006(1), pp. 85-9). Early public choice theorists told a simple and very plausible story about the differential political power of groups (Mashaw, 2010(2)). Transaction costs: Organizing a group involves transaction costs, including the need to motivate participation in the face of incentives to free-ride. It seems very reasonable to postulate that these costs increase along with the size of the group, all else being equal. It is obviously easier to get one person with a $ 1000 stake to join an organization and take action than it is to get a thousand people with $1 stakes to do so (Stearns and Zywicki, 2009(3), pp. 55-62). >Collective action. Small groups: Early public choice theorists then concluded that politics would be dominated by smaller, easily organized special interests at the expense of the public as a whole (Stigler, 1971)(4). So government should mostly function as a mechanism for transferring wealth from the public to special interest groups of various kinds (Mashaw, 2010)(2). Vs: This is a seductive argument but turns out to be far too facile, as well as inconsistent with much recent evidence about collective action (Ginsburg, 2002(5), pp. 1144-1149). Environmental groups: It suggests, for instance, that environmental groups should not form at all, and that environmental legislation should not exist. Yet groups such as the Sierra Club are very much alive and well, and industry complains constantly about the burdens created by environmental legislation (Mashaw, 2010(2), pp. 28—31; Croley, 2010(6), pp. 52-53). Cf. >Emission permits, >Emission reduction credits, >Emission targets, >Emissions, >Emissions trading, >Climate change, >Climate damage, >Energy policy, >Clean Energy Standards, >Climate data, >Climate history, >Climate justice, >Climate periods, >Climate targets, >Climate impact research, >Carbon price, >Carbon price coordination, >Carbon price strategies, >Carbon tax, >Carbon tax strategies. 1. Eskridge, W. N., P. P. Frickey, and E. Garrett (2006). Legislation and Statutory Interpretation. 2nd edition. St. Paul, MN: Foundation Press. 2. Mashaw, J. (2010). "Public Law and Public Choice: Critique and Rapprochement," in D. A. Farber and A. J. O'Connell, eds., Research Handbook on Public Choice and Public Law, 19-48. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. 3. Stearns, M. L. and T. J. Zywicki (2009). Public Choice Concepts and Applications in Law. St. Paul, MN: Thomas Reuters. 4. Stigler, G. J. (1971). "The Theory of Economic Regulation." Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2(1):3-21. 5. Ginsburg, T. (2002). "Ways of Criticizing Public Choice: The Uses of Empiricisms and the Theory in Legal Scholarship." University of Illinois Law Review 4: 1 139-1166. 6. Croley, S. (2010). "Interest Groups and Public Choice," in D. A. Farber and A. J. O'Connell, eds., Research Handbook on Public Choice and Public Law, 49—86. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Farber, Daniel A. “Public Choice Theory and Legal Institutions”. In: Parisi, Francesco (ed) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol 1: Methodology and Concepts. NY: Oxford University Press_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Public Choice Theory Parisi I Francesco Parisi (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts New York 2017 |
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> Counter arguments against Public Choice Theory
> Counter arguments in relation to Environmental Groups
