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inert resource, not a web of life, and eco-feminists anddeep ecologists who acknowledge a spiritual dimensionto their politics are dismissed as ‘romantic’. It is as-sumed, too, that no-one fought for environmental justicebefore the community action at Love Canal in 1978 –there is little reference, for example, to the centuries-oldstruggle of Native Americans to protect their sacredlands from commercial exploitation.

Despite its shortcomings, this book should be essen-tial reading for academics concerned with the impact ofnew social movements on business strategy and govern-ment policy, as well as for community activists. Hope-fully, it will also be read by business strategists who areopen to a fresh perspective on what genuine stakeholderengagement might involve.

Alan NealeEast London Business School, London, UK

DOI: 10.1002/bse.307

THE MARKET AND THE ENVIRONMENT: THE EF-FECTIVENESS OF MARKET-BASED POLICY INSTRU-MENTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM, edited byThomas Sterner, 1999. Elgar, xvi+488 pp, £75.00 (hbk).ISBN 1-85898-906-X

This volume brings together 21 papers, most of whichwere first presented at a Swedish workshop of theEuropean Research Network on Market-Based Instru-ments for Sustainable Development. The Network itselfreceives funding from DGXII of the European Commis-sion under the ‘Concerted action’ initiative. The contrib-utors are an eclectic group, reflecting the participants inthe workshop. They include young researchers andwell-established academic environmental economists,members of research institutes, consultants and civilservants. Although the bulk of the contributions dealwith issues related to OECD nations, there are severalpapers focused on Eastern Europe and Africa, and oneon Asia.

The editor’s preface distances the main thrust of thecollection from the prevailing debate on such instru-ments: the ‘double-dividend’ hypothesis. There is a sin-gle paper on this, which reviews the context in whichecological tax reform has been treated in the literature.This identifies the extent to which the debate on thishypothesis has become bound up with issues of carbontaxation, with very little empirical research to test thehypothesis outside this area. Park and Pezzey concludethat the weak version of the hypothesis is easy tosupport, but that there are sufficient doubts on boththeoretical and empirical grounds about the strong ver-sion to discard this as a justification for ecological taxreform where ecotaxes cannot be shown to have clearbenefits in terms of raising environmental standards.

The general focus in the remainder of the collection ison examining the conditions in which market-based

instruments can replace or reinforce traditional com-mand and control regulations designed to protect theenvironment and promote sustainability. The instru-ments considered range across the spectrum, and in-clude road user charges, water fees, energy levies, accesslicences, utility pricing schemes, tradable pollution per-mits, non-compliance fines and so on. In some cases, theinterpretation of what constitutes a genuine ecotaxvaries from paper to paper, reflecting the considerableuncertainty in the minds of both academics and policymakers in this respect. It is difficult to see where somecontributors draw a line between the need to removepricing distortions caused by inefficient taxes and subsi-dies in general, which may in passing also alleviatedetrimental environmental impacts, and the promotionof market-based instruments primarily as a more effec-tive and efficient means to delivering environmentalimprovements.

The main interest of the volume is the light thrown onthe contribution that market-based instruments canmake to delivering improved environmental standardsin OECD nations. The papers that deal with this serve asa touchstone for measuring progress in this respect sincethe OECD itself initiated this debate in the late 1980s.Hogg provides a useful preliminary assessment of theeffectiveness of the UK Landfill Tax, which follows apaper by the editor offering a discussion of the impactof Swedish waste management and recycling policy.Cramton and Kerr examine the distributional effects ofcarbon regulation and the attractions of auctioning car-bon permits in a paper that adds a North Americanperspective to the debate on implementing the Kyotoprotocol.

Nordlander’s paper, which is an updated version of apart of the final report of the Swedish Green Tax Com-mission, compares energy and environmental taxesacross OECD nations. From a UK perspective, one of themore intriguing findings in this review is that whereasthe UK is at the top of the league with respect to taxeson vehicle fuel, it is at the bottom for taxes on domesticheating fuel. Although distortions to trade caused by thevery wide range of tax rates on energy and fuel amongstOECD nations must exist, harmonization would pre-sumably need to be preceded by some agreement onoptimal rates of ecotaxation: it is not self-evident thatthe higher the tax the better the environmental effect.

The paper by Jeppesen, Folmer and Komen throws anintriguing light on the effects of ecotaxes on interna-tional trade and capital movements. They conclude,after reviewing the theoretical and empirical literature,that there is little consensus to support the generalargument that more rigorous national environmentalstandards, however enforced, promote either measur-able trade distortions or large-scale flights of capital tonations with lower standards. The current empiricalevi-dence is found to be inconclusive, with each case need-ing to be considered on its merits, suggesting thatfurther research might help defuse what has become anuninformed political diatribe.

The most thought-provoking contribution, Tieten-berg’s examination of the ‘third phase’ of environmental

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policy making, is used to introduce the collection. Tradi-tional command and control measures are categorized asfirst phase, market-based instruments as second phaseand what Tietenberg terms ‘disclosure strategies’ makeup the latest phase. These can be envisaged as a mecha-nism for implementing Coasian solutions where hightransaction costs currently render negotiable contractualoutcomes to environmental problems otherwise infeasi-ble. Information disclosures, while placing little immedi-ate burden on either regulator or polluter, serve totrigger liability claims. By reinforcing strict liability andmaking customers and employees aware of their expo-

sure to environmental risks, such requirements forcepolluters to incorporate more environmentally benignmanagement behaviour. After providing a theoreticalframework in which to evaluate such strategies, Tieten-berg offers a survey of current practice in this area. Thevolume is likely to be cited mainly for this piece.

Tony JacksonGeddes Centre for Planning Research,

University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK

DOI: 10.1002/bse.308

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