institutional responses to climate change, including international approaches
and U.S. policy developments. Shogren and Toman go on to explore the costs
and benefits of climate change risk mitigation, and they discuss alternatives
to a benefit--cost analysis framework. They emphasize throughout the com-
plications of estimating the benefits and costs of avoiding damages from cli-
mate change, as well as the potential value of waiting for more and better
information before incurring significant costs. The authors outline some
important considerations in the design of climate change policies and the
choice of policy instruments, and they emphasize the need for a stable,
coherent international climate change policy architecture, in addition to
sound domestic policies.

In Chapter 6, A. Myrick Freeman reviews the history and evolution of
federal water pollution control policy, highlighting issues that have directed
policy toward greater federal responsibility over time for standard setting,
implementation, and financing. Freeman appraises the key features of the
Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 that have defined the contempo-
rary approach to water policy, as well as revisions to that framework by the
1977, 1981, and 1987 amendments and by related statutes. He reviews
accomplishments in water effluent discharge control and water quality
improvements, to the extent that these can and have been measured. Finally,
he compares the costs and benefits of water pollution control policy, consid-
ers relative cost-effectiveness, and uses his analysis to evaluate two policies:
federal subsidies for municipal sewage treatment plants and the evolving fed-
eral approach to nonpoint-source water pollution control.

In Chapter 7, Hilary Sigman considers two related sets of federal envi-
ronmental policies: hazardous waste and toxic substances regulation. She
begins with an overview of hazardous waste management methods and
recent trends in hazardous waste management, including treatment, storage
and disposal prices, disposal quantities and methods, and total waste genera-
tion. Sigman analyzes the likely impact of the federal Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act (RCRA) on these trends and assesses RCRA's provisions in
a benefit--cost framework. She comments on the recent focus on distribution
of impacts across households of various racial and economic groups. Sigman
also reviews regulations regarding cleanup of contaminated sites, primarily
RCRA's Corrective Action and Superfund, as well as debates over who should
pay for cleanup and "how clean is clean"--that is, the appropriate scale of
contaminated site remedies. In her discussion of federal policies to control
general exposure to toxic substances, Sigman examines the Toxic Substances
Control Act, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, and the
Emergency Planning and Community-Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). She
focuses on the Toxics Release Inventory, created by EPCRA in 1986, and

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