Umwelt, Bewußtsein und Handeln: eine ökonomische Analyse

The discussion in environmental policy seems to mark time since quite a while. From the economic theory it is well known that the reasons for environmental problems are based on market failures and that market-oriented policies are economically more efficient and ecologically more powerful than regulatory policies.

But to the present day the introduction of market-oriented policies mostly failed. In practice the overwhelming part of the environmental policy is still based on regulations, and the global and local situation of the environment is even worse than a few years ago the environmental discussion arose and with it the expansion of environmental policy. In this article the authors pursue two different goals:

First they want to identify the reasons for the failure of such market-oriented policies in the political process.

There exist two different kinds of reasons two different fields of economic theory, psychological and political economics, deal with.

Second they introduce a model, that will show how the introduction of higher-ranking principles may improve the chances of market-oriented instruments in the political process.