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In this important book Tim Jeppesen investigates environmental regulation in a federal system and addresses the underlying question of whether regulation should be decided centrally, by EU institutions, or de-centrally, by individual member states. Whilst simple economic reasoning presumes that transboundary externalities require central solutions and local externalities need local solutions, the author finds that the real answer is much more complicated.

Part of the problem is the fact that EU institutions are complex organisations and their rationale and decision making is not always in the interests of economic efficiency alone, but is often based upon other criteria. The author demonstrates this using the example of subsidiarity, a principal which directly affects the distribution of competencies between the EU and individual member states. Although subsidiarity is supposedly underpinned by economic efficiency, he finds that it is in fact, first and foremost, a political concept shaped by EU institutions. The author goes on to examine the balance between the costs and benefits of central and de-central environmental policies, and demonstrates how an environmental regulatory authority can be allocated most efficiently among federal and state governments.

Tim Jeppesen extends the basic theoretical issues to investigate the challenging problems which arise in the actual determination of policy measures in the context of the EU. This wide-ranging study of both the conceptual and practical dimensions of environmental regulation in a federal system will be welcomed by economists, political scientists, policymakers and students.