THE ROLE OF USER FEES IN THE SUPPLY OF ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES

摘要

The scope of this paper was to present the advantages and drawbacks of the different ways of providing and financing environmental services. It appears very clearly that fees-financed services are in most cases a better option than taxes-financed ones and that they should be considered, if not always used, as a guideline. It is also clear that in order to lead to optimal allocation of resources and save scarce resources marginal pricing should be the rule. However these rules admit exceptions and user fees do not always need to cover total production costs when users are not the only beneficiaries of the services. These conclusions are not restricted to environmental services. The analysis presented above is also relevant for a majority of other local public services such as transportation, and in a more general way for infrastructure services.