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Ownership as a Pre Requisite for Water Pollution Prevention

Ownership as a Pre Requisite for Water Pollution Prevention Roger Bate' The topic that I have chosen to discuss today is that of water pollution prevention and specifically river pollution prevention, in the UK. River Pollution is a real and vitally important problem for many developed and developing countries. Yet it is not a world-wide glamorous popular problem -- it is usually a localised one. English and Welsh Courts and Local Councils have been successfully handling pollution disputes (especially water pollution disputes) for centuries. However, most modem policymakers ignore the long-established institutions and how they worked in the past. Each new regulator has designed new institutions (institutions are the legal rules/framework) with little regard to what went before. This lack of empiricism, this lack of institutional analysis will not be of surprise to those who remember the work of Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase. Twenty years ago Coase wrote a paper called "The Lighthouse in Economics", in it he challenged the traditional analysis which assumed that lighthouses had always been provided by the state due to the "impossibility of securing payment from the owners of the ships that benefit from the existence of the lighthouse, making it unprofitable for any private individual, or firm, to build, and maintain http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines de Gruyter

Ownership as a Pre Requisite for Water Pollution Prevention

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the
ISSN
2194-5799
eISSN
2153-1552
DOI
10.1515/jeeh-1996-2-317
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Roger Bate' The topic that I have chosen to discuss today is that of water pollution prevention and specifically river pollution prevention, in the UK. River Pollution is a real and vitally important problem for many developed and developing countries. Yet it is not a world-wide glamorous popular problem -- it is usually a localised one. English and Welsh Courts and Local Councils have been successfully handling pollution disputes (especially water pollution disputes) for centuries. However, most modem policymakers ignore the long-established institutions and how they worked in the past. Each new regulator has designed new institutions (institutions are the legal rules/framework) with little regard to what went before. This lack of empiricism, this lack of institutional analysis will not be of surprise to those who remember the work of Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase. Twenty years ago Coase wrote a paper called "The Lighthouse in Economics", in it he challenged the traditional analysis which assumed that lighthouses had always been provided by the state due to the "impossibility of securing payment from the owners of the ships that benefit from the existence of the lighthouse, making it unprofitable for any private individual, or firm, to build, and maintain

Journal

Journal des Économistes et des Études Humainesde Gruyter

Published: Jun 1, 1996

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