| The key issue behind the environmental group events in law and economics is the efficient choice of the legal rules in environmental protection. The property rules and liability rules framework by Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed is of help. The main efficiency standards of C&M Framework are ex post opportunity cost and ex ante incentive efficiency. Taking a thought experiment of environmental pollution as example, the C&M Framework can be extended to five types of rules, corresponding to different types of markets, that is, inactivity rules to yellow market, inalienable rules to black market or no market, property rules to white market, liability rules to green market, and regulation rules to red market and gray market.According to the efficient standards, we may examine the cost-benefits and the practical effects of the existing and potential legal options in environmental protection. By contrast, the current regime based on the Environmental Impact Assessment Law is generally more efficient than the ex ante administrative prohibition and the ex post judicial remedies, but is subject to the credibility of the environmental protection agencies. However, according to the very practice of environmental protection in today’s China, the regulation rules and the inalienable rules are more realistic than the liability rules and the property rules. And the choice between the liability rules and the property rules should take the heaviness of the pollution into account. The choice of rules has to suffer the delimitation cost. Only if all the possible types of rules have been examined and all their efficient differences have been compared, can the choice, evaluation, and improvement of rules be rational. |
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