and the Clean Air Act is paradigmatic of the sort of policy that causes it. denver broncos united in orange full printing ugly sweater In addition to health, despite the reduction of harmful pollutants in the air,
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And better a flawed law that includes grandfathering, the theory goes, than no law at all. But even where grandfathering looks more efficient in the short term, it may be undesirable in the long term. denver broncos united in orange full printing ugly sweater This is because the cost advantage of running an uncontrolled old plant rather than upgrading it or opening a new one will decline over time, as deteriorating equipment results in higher maintenance costs and as pollution-reduction equipment becomes more cost effective. As a result, the sort of indefinite grandfathering practiced by the Clean Air Act is particularly undesirable from an efficiency standpoint. Grandfathering is not unique to the Clean Air Act, of course. On the contrary, exempting those already engaged
in an activity from complying with new restrictions on that activity is common practice in a variety of legal arenas, ranging from the federal tax code to local licensing requirements for interior designers. Over the years, legal academics have identified three reasons—fairness, efficiency, and political pragmatism—that might justify offering some sort of “transition relief” to existing actors when imposing a new regulatory regime. An environmental regulation that applies solely to new plants alters this calculus. Why is this the case? Let us assume that the only way to comply with the regulation is to install a new emission-reduction technology. Purchasing and installing that equipment, as well as operating it, will cost the utility money. So the costs of building a new plant have gone up, and the benefits—that is, the avoided operational expenses—have gone down, making the project less likely to pencil out for the utility. Academics call this distortion of retirement decisions the “old plant effect,”
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