Esto es algo de lo que siempre hablamos en mi curso de Regulación ambiental para el sector eléctrico. Hay muchas razones para que los políticos elijan políticas menos eficientes: costes escondidos, percepción social (a veces equivocada), ventajas a corto plazo...no hace falta, por supuesto, llegar a lobbies o corrupción.
Jiang et al lo documentan en este working paper (Gracias a Natalia por la pista):
Many governments use environmental standards rather than more
cost-effective market-based instruments like pollution taxes or
cap-and-trade markets. Using a nationally representative survey
experiment, we study whether and why limited understanding of economic
principles helps explain this practice. Holding environmental impacts
constant, respondents prefer standards over market-based instruments,
and prefer producer taxes and cap-and-trade over consumer taxes. These
preferences reflect consumers’ beliefs about how these policies will
affect electricity bills. Respondents also prefer the weakest
environmental targets for consumer taxes and the strongest targets for
standards, which suggests that policymakers face a tradeoff between
policy stringency and cost effectiveness. A separate survey of
environmental economists shows that they have strikingly different
beliefs about the effects of environmental policies than the respondents
in our representative survey. For example, typical respondents—in
contrast to environmental economists—believe that environmental
standards increase consumer energy bills less than market-based
instruments do. Educational videos on pass-through and
cost-effectiveness of policies affect policy support and close some of
the gap between nationally representative respondents and experts, which
suggests that economic literacy is a factor in voters’ preferences.
Aquí está la versión divulgativa.