Legal Liability as an Environmental Policy Tool: Some Implications for Land Markets

This article considers the use of legal liability as a tool for internalizing environmental externalities, considering specifically the implications for land markets. The discussion focuses on liability under CERCLA. A simple model of land markets is used to evaluate alternative assignments of liability in terms of their impacts on decisions to buy and sell property and to invest in pollution abatement. The results suggest that the existence of a land market can alter the effect of the liability rule. In some cases the land market can eliminate an inefficiency that would otherwise exist, while in other cases it can create one.