Using Economic Instruments to Fix the Liability of Polluters in India
Assessment of the Information Required and Identification of Gaps
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i2.363Keywords:
Ambient Standards; Taxes; Permits; Carbon Tax; Pollution.Abstract
This review paper highlights the informational requirements for the effective use of environmental policy instruments to achieve ambient standards of pollution in India. A section on the Integrated Urban Air Pollution Assessment Model is attempted to identify data requirements for, and information gaps associated with, using these instruments. We review the available information and identify informational gaps that thwart the realization of ambient standards of environmental quality. In India, command-and-control instruments are arbitrarily used to assign liability without taking cognizance of economic estimates. The available cost–benefit estimates of air and water pollution, combined with air quality modelling for urban areas and water quality modelling, are essential inputs for using environmental policy instruments to ensure compliance with ambient standards. We discuss how to use economic estimates while designing and using economic instruments such as pollution taxes and pollution permits, in addition to command and control.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Appasamy, P. 2002. “Environmental Impact of Industrial Effluents in Noyyal River Basin.” Unpublished report, Madras School of Economics.
Baumol, WJ and Wallace E Oates. 1988. The Theory of Environmental Policy. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173513 .
Chambers, Robert G, and Rolf Färe. 2020. “Distance Functions in Production Economics.” In Handbook of Production Economics, edited by Subhash C Ray, Robert G Chambers, and Subal C Kumbhakar, 1–53. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3450-3_14-1 .
Chatterjee, Sushmita, Kishore K Dhavala, and MN Murty. 2007. “Estimating Cost of Air Pollution Abatement for Road Transport in India: Case Studies of Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.” Economic &Political Weekly 42 (36): 3662–3668.
Duflo, Esther, Rohini Pande, Michael Greenstone, and Nicholas Ryan. 2010. “Towards an Emissions Trading Scheme for Air Pollutants in India: A Concept Note.” Working Papers No. 3178, eSocialSciences.
Freeman, A Myrick, III. 1993. “The Measurement of Environmental and Resource Values: Theory and Methods”, Washington DC: Resources for the Future.
Ganguli, S, and Joyashree Roy. 1999. “Water Pollution Abatement Cost and Tax in the Paper Industry.” In Environmental Economics in India: Concepts and Problems, edited by Gautam Gupta and Joyashree Roy. Allied Publishers Ltd.
Garaga, Rajyalakshmi, Shovan Kumar Sahu, and Sri Harsha Kota. 2018. “A Review of Air Quality Modeling Studies in India: Local and Regional Scale.” Current Pollution Reports 4(2): 59–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40726-018-0081-0.
Goldar, Bishwanath, and Rita Pandey. 2001. “Water Pricing and Abatement of Industrial Water Pollution: Study of Distilleries in India.” Environmental Economics and Policy Studies 4 (2): 95–113. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03353918.
Gupta, DB, MN Murty, and Rita Pandey. 1989. “Water Conservation and Pollution Abatement in Indian Industry: A Study of Water Tariff.” New Delhi: National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
Hoel, Michael. 1991a. “Global Environmental Problems: The Effects of Unilateral Actions Taken by One Country.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 20(1): 55–70. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315202310-10.
Hoel, Michael. 1991b. “Carbon Taxes: An International Tax or Harmonized Domestic Taxes?” CICERO Working Papers.
Jain, Rakesh Kumar, and Surender Kumar. 2018. “Shadow Price of CO2 Emissions in Indian Thermal Power Sector.” Environmental Economics and Policy Studies 20 (4): 879–902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10018-018-0218-9.
James, AJ, and MN Murty. 1996. “Water Pollution Abatement: A Taxes-and-standards Approach for Indian Industry.” In Economics of Industrial Pollution: Indian Experience, edited by MN Murty and Smita Misra. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Markandya, Anil and MN Murty. 2000. Cleaning Up the Ganges: The Cost Benefit Analysis of Ganga Action Plan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Markandya, Anil, and MN Murty. 2004. “Cost–Benefit Analysis of Cleaning the Ganges: Some Emerging Environment and Development Issues.” Environment and Development Economics 9(1): 61–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1355770x03001013.
Mehta, Shekhar, Sudipto Mundle, and Ulaganathan Sankar. 1997. Controlling Pollution: Incentives and Regulations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Mitchell, Robert Cameron, and Richard T Carson. 1989. Using Surveys to Value Public Goods: The Contingent Valuation Method. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.
Murty, MN. 1996. “Fiscal Federalism Approach for Controlling Global Environmental Pollution.” Environmental and Resource Economics 8(4): 449–459. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00357413.
Murty, MN, and Surender Kumar. 2002. “Measuring the Cost of Environmentally Sustainable Industrial Development in India: A Distance Function Approach.” Environment and Development Economics 7(3): 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1355770x02000281.
Murty, MN, and Surender Kumar. 2004. Environmental and Economic Accounting for Industry. New York: Oxford University Press.
Murty, MN, SC Gulati, and Avishek Banerjee. 2004. “Benefits from Reduced Air Pollution in the Cities of Delhi and Kolkata in India Using Hedonic Property Prices Model.” In Environmental Valuation in South Asia, edited by AK Enamul Haque, MN Murty, and Priya Shyamsundar, 380–411. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.Murty, MN, Kishore Kumar Dhavala, Meenakshi Ghosh, and Rashmi Singh. 2006. “Social Cost– Benefit Analysis of Delhi Metro.” New Delhi: Institute of Economic Growth.
Murty, MN, and SC Gulati. 2006. “Natural Resource Accounts of Air and Water Pollution: Case Studies of Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh States of India.” New Delhi: Institute of Economic Growth.
Murty, MN, Surender Kumar, and Kishore Kumar Dhavala. 2007. “Measuring Environmental Efficiency of Industry: A Case Study of Thermal Power Generation in India.” Environmental and Resource Economics 38 (1): 31–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-006-9055-6. Murty, MN. 2009. Environment, Sustainable Development and Well-Being: Taxation, Incentives and Valuation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Murty, MN. 2010. “Designing Economic Instruments and Participatory Institutions for Environmental Management in India.” Working Paper No. 48–10, South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics.
Murty, MN, Haripriya Gundimeda, Sukanya Das., and Kavita Sardana. 2019. “Meta-analysis for Environmental Damage Assessment.” New Delhi: TERI School of Advanced Studies.
Murty, Sushama, and Resham Nagpal. 2019. “Measuring Output-based Technical Efficiency of Indian Coal-based Thermal Power Plants: A By-production Approach.” Indian Growth and Development Review 13(1): 175–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-006-9055-6.
Murty, Sushama, and R Robert Russell. 2020. “Bad Outputs.” In Handbook of Production Economics, edited by Subhash C Ray, Robert G Chambers, and Subal C Kumbhakar, 1–53. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3450-3_3-1 .
OECD. 2018. “Carbon Pricing in 2015 – Detailed Analysis.” In Effective Carbon Rates 2018: Pricing Carbon Emissions Through Taxes and Emissions Trading. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264305304-5-en.
Pandey, Rita. 2004. “Economic Policy Instruments for Controlling Vehicular Air Pollution.” Environment and Development Economics 9(1): 47–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1355770x03001025.
Pandey, Rita, and Geetesh Bhardwaj. 2004. “Comparing the Cost Effectiveness of Market-based Policy Instruments Versus Regulation: The Case of Emission Trading in an Integrated Steel Plant in India.” Environment and Development Economics 9(1): 107–122. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1355770x03001104.
Sandmo, Agnar. 1975. “Optimal Taxation in the Presence of Externalities.” The Swedish Journal of Economics 77(1): 86–98. https://doi.org/10.2307/3439329.
Stern, Nicholas, and Nicholas Herbert Stern. 2007. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511817434 .
Sterner, Thomas. 2003. Policy Instruments for Environmental and Natural Resource Management. New York: Routledge.
Weitzman, Martin L. 1974. “Prices vs. Quantities.” The Review of Economic Studies 41(4): 477–491. https://doi.org/10.2307/2296698.
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Sukanya Das, MN Murty, Kavita Sardana
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by INSEE unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by INSEE are required to transfer non-exclusive publishing right to INSEE of the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.
Authors who publish in Ecology, Economy and Society will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given.
For details of the rights that the authors grant users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.)
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the Ecology, Economy and Society—the INSEE Journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
In case of re-publishing a previously published work, author may note that earlier publication may have taken place a license different from Creative Commons. In all such cases of re-publishing, we advise the authors to consult the applicable licence at article level.