Harrington Paradox
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Harrington Paradox
Harrington paradox is a notion in the environmental and ecological economics describing the compliance of firms to the environmental regulations. The paradox was first described in Winston Harrington's paper in 1988 and was based on the research over monitoring, realization and compliance to environmental regulations in the US from the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s. According to the paradox, the firms in general comply with environmental regulations in spite of the fact that: * Frequency of environmental monitoring of firms is low * In case of detection of violations, the violator-firm is rarely punished * The expected fine is low in comparison to the cost of compliance Explanation Firms' compliance at such level is contrary to the rational crime theory of Gary Becker which describes the behavior of profit maximizing entities. The rational firms will comply to the standards only in case the expected fine is higher than the cost of compliance. In order to explain the ...
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Environmental Economics
Environmental economics is a sub-field of economics concerned with environmental issues. It has become a widely studied subject due to growing environmental concerns in the twenty-first century. Environmental economics "undertakes theoretical or empirical studies of the economic effects of national or local environmental policies around the world. Particular issues include the costs and benefits of alternative environmental policies to deal with air pollution, water quality, toxic substances, solid waste, and global warming." Environmental Versus Ecological Economics Environmental economics is distinguished from ecological economics in that ecological economics emphasizes the economy as a subsystem of the ecosystem with its focus upon preserving natural capital. While environmental economics focuses on human preferences, by trying to balance protecting natural resources with people's needs for products and services. Due to these differences it can be seen that ecologi ...
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Ecological Economics
Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economy, economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economics, mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that Physical capital, physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital (see the section on #Weak versus strong sustainability, weak versus strong sustainability below). Ecological ...
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Compliance (regulation)
In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Compliance has traditionally been explained by reference to deterrence theory, according to which punishing a behavior will decrease the violations both by the wrongdoer (specific deterrence) and by others (general deterrence). This view has been supported by economic theory, which has framed punishment in terms of costs and has explained compliance in terms of a cost-benefit equilibrium (Becker 1968). However, psychological research on motivation provides an alternative view: granting rewards (Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999) or imposing fines (Gneezy Rustichini 2000) for a certain behavior is a form of extrinsic motivation that weakens intrinsic motivation and ultimately undermines compliance. Regulatory compliance describes the goal that organizations aspire to achieve in their efforts to ensure that they are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws, policies, and r ...
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Environmental Regulation
Environmental laws are laws that protect the environment. The term "environmental law" encompasses treaties, statutes, regulations, conventions, and policies designed to protect the natural environment and manage the impact of human activities on ecosystems and natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries. It addresses issues such as pollution control, resource conservation, biodiversity protection, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development. As part of both national and international legal frameworks, environmental law seeks to balance environmental preservation with economic and social needs, often through regulatory mechanisms, enforcement measures, and incentives for compliance. The field emerged prominently in the mid-20th century as industrialization and environmental degradation spurred global awareness, culminating in landmark agreements like the 1972 Stockholm Conference and the 1992 Rio Declaration. Key principles include the precaut ...
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Paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites". In logic, many paradoxes exist that are known to be invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself and showed that attempts to found set theory on ...
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Environmental Monitoring
Environmental monitoring is the processes and activities that are done to characterize and describe the state of the environment. It is used in the preparation of environmental impact assessments, and in many circumstances in which human activities may cause harmful effects on the natural environment. Monitoring strategies and programmes are generally designed to establish the current status of an environment or to establish a baseline and trends in environmental parameters. The results of monitoring are usually reviewed, analyzed statistics, statistically, and published. A monitoring programme is designed around the intended use of the data before monitoring starts. Environmental monitoring includes monitoring of Air pollution, air quality, soils and water quality. Many monitoring programmes are designed to not only establish the current state of the environment but also predict future conditions. In some cases this may involve collecting data related to events in the distant p ...
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Fine (penalty)
A fine or mulct (the latter synonym typically used in Civil law (common law), civil law) is a penalty of money that a court of law or other authority decides has to be paid as punishment for a crime or other Offense (law), offense. The amount of a fine can be determined case by case, but it is often announced in advance. The most usual use of the term is for financial punishments for the commission of crimes, especially minor crimes, or as the settlement (law), settlement of a Claim (legal), claim. One typical example of a fine is money paid for violations of traffic laws. In English law, English common law, relatively Standard scale, small fines are used either in place of or alongside community service orders for low-level criminal offences. More considerable fines are also given independently or alongside shorter prison sentences when the judge or magistrate considers a large amount of retribution is necessary, but there is unlikely to be a significant danger to the public. ...
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Gary Becker
Gary Stanley Becker (; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of the third generation of the Chicago school of economics. Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Becker their favorite living economist over the age of 60, followed by Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow. Economist Justin Wolfers called him "the most important social scientist in the past 50 years." Becker was one of the first economists to analyze topics that had been researched in sociology, including racial discrimination, crime, family organization, and rational addiction. He argued that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility-maximizing, including those that ...
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Altruism
Altruism is the concern for the well-being of others, independently of personal benefit or reciprocity. The word ''altruism'' was popularised (and possibly coined) by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as , for an antonym of egoism. He derived it from the Italian , which in turn was derived from Latin , meaning "alterity, other people" or "somebody else". Altruism may be considered a synonym of selflessness, the opposite of self-centeredness. Altruism is an important moral value in many cultures and religions. It can Moral circle expansion, expand beyond care for humans to include other Sentience, sentient beings and future generations. Altruism, as observed in populations of organisms, is when an individual performs an action at a cost to itself (in terms of e.g. pleasure and quality of life, time, probability of survival or reproduction) that benefits, directly or indirectly, another individual, without the expectation of reciprocity or compensation for that ac ...
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Empirical Data
Empirical evidence is evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure. It is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law. There is no general agreement on how the terms ''evidence'' and ''empirical'' are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which '' confirms'' or ''disconfirms'' scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, evidence must be public and uncontroversial, like observable physical objects or events and unlike private mental states, so th ...
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Norwegian Climate And Pollution Agency
The Norwegian Climate and Pollution Agency (, ''Klif''), named Norwegian Pollution Control Authority (, ''SFT'') until 2010, was a Norwegian government agency from 1974 to 2013 when it was merged into the Norwegian Environment Agency. The agency was responsible for ensuring that pollution, waste and other harmful substances did not result in health damage, inflict the well-being or hinder the production and reproduction of nature. In particular it had a responsibility of pollution related to sea and water, chemicals, waste and recycling, global warming, air pollution and noise. It was subordinate to the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment and was responsible to ensure that the ''Pollution Act'', the ''Product Control Act'' and the ''Climate Quota Act'' were followed, including issuing permits for submission, including controlling that these permissions are followed. The agency had 325 employees based in Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. I ...
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Punishment
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or behavior that is deemed undesirable. It is, however, possible to distinguish between various different understandings of what punishment is. The reasoning for punishment may be to condition a child to avoid self-endangerment, to impose social conformity (in particular, in the contexts of compulsory education or military discipline), to defend norms, to protect against future harms (in particular, those from violent crime), and to maintain the law—and respect for rule of law—under which the social group is governed. and violates the law or rules by which the group is governed. Punishment may be self-inflicted as with self-flagellation and mortification of the flesh in the religious setting, but is most often a form of socia ...
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