Abstract
Public policies for hazardous waste address both current waste management and the clean-up of a legacy of contamination. Policies for current waste management should provide incentives for waste generators that are sensitive to the varying hazards posed by waste. Although conventional regulations have difficulty accomplishing this variation, alternative incentive-based policies show promise empirically. Policies for clean-up of contamination often fail to strike an appropriate balance between hazards posed by the contamination and costs of clean-up. In addition, relying on legal liability to fund these clean-ups has consequences for the costs of clean-up and possibly for the redevelopment of contaminated land.
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Sigman, H. (2018). Hazardous Waste, Economics of. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2649
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2649
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