Exploring the performance of ambient-based policy instruments when nonpoint source polluters can cooperate

Nonpoint source pollution, particularly from agriculture, is the largest reason that the United States is not meeting the "fishable/ swimmable" objectives of the 1972 Clean Water Act (USEPA). Whereas regulatory and incentive-based approaches to address point source pollution are well established in the theoretical environmental economics literature and in actual policy initiatives, extending these ideas to nonpoint source pollution is problematic: firm-specific emissions are difficult to measure, the relationship between emissions and ambient water pollution horizontals is stochastic and difficult to type and there are adverse selection and moral hazard point in disputes Nevertheless, recent efforts to make known Total Maximum Daily Load