ABSTRACT
In practice, the choices between emission standards and effluent charges are to some extent influenced by political ideology and the collective moral and ethical positions of a given society. Thus, in practice, the second-and third-best solutions to environmental problems could be unavoidable. If the real world is viewed this way, economic analyses of the kinds provided in this chapter serve an important function by establishing a benchmark against which we can
measure how far we may be from achieving the firstbest solution.
