Résumé en anglais

The economic literature differentiates “command and control” policies, in which the public authority sets up standards and rules to directly reduce environmental damage, from policies based on “economic tools” aiming at internalizing the cost of environmental damage. There is a broad consensus among economists in favour of economic tools that aim at protecting the environment in the most efficient way, i.e. by minimizing the total cost of pollution abatement. Despite those recommendations, most of the environmental policies implemented in the real world continue to favour command and control policies.