Externality
noun
A side effect or result that affects those who did not choose to experience it.
Pollution from factories is an example of a negative externality as it affects everyone, not just the factory owners.
Often appears as...
- negative externality
- positive externality
Usage tips
Formal
Academic
noun
In computing, it's something that exists or operates outside the control of a system.
An external disk drive is an externality as it operates outside the CPU.
Usage tips
Formal
Technical
noun
A side effect or result that affects those who did not choose to experience it.
Pollution from factories is an example of a negative externality as it affects everyone, not just the factory owners.
Often appears as...
- negative externality
- positive externality
Usage tips
Formal
Academic
noun
In computing, it's something that exists or operates outside the control of a system.
An external disk drive is an externality as it operates outside the CPU.
Usage tips
Formal
Technical
Definition 1 of 2
Pro Tip 1/3Impact Beyond Choice
An externality involves outcomes affecting those who didn't choose to be involved.
Residents didn't choose the new highway, but noise pollution is an externality they face.
Pro Tip 2/3Not Always Bad
Externalities can be positive, like a park that beautifies the area for all.
The new park's beauty is a positive externality for the neighborhood.
Pro Tip 3/3Public Policy Relevance
Governments often step in to correct negative externalities through regulations.
To reduce traffic congestion's externality, the city introduced a carpool policy.
Pro Tip 1/3Impact Beyond Choice
An externality involves outcomes affecting those who didn't choose to be involved.
Residents didn't choose the new highway, but noise pollution is an externality they face.
Pro Tip 2/3Not Always Bad
Externalities can be positive, like a park that beautifies the area for all.
The new park's beauty is a positive externality for the neighborhood.
Pro Tip 3/3Public Policy Relevance
Governments often step in to correct negative externalities through regulations.
To reduce traffic congestion's externality, the city introduced a carpool policy.
Pro Tip 1/3Impact Beyond Choice
An externality involves outcomes affecting those who didn't choose to be involved.
Residents didn't choose the new highway, but noise pollution is an externality they face.
Pro Tip 2/3Not Always Bad
Externalities can be positive, like a park that beautifies the area for all.
The new park's beauty is a positive externality for the neighborhood.
Pro Tip 3/3Public Policy Relevance
Governments often step in to correct negative externalities through regulations.
To reduce traffic congestion's externality, the city introduced a carpool policy.
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Video examples
Obesity + Hunger = 1...
negative externalities like petrochemicals and like fertilizer runoff into the price of a bag of chips well if that bag of chips then becomes sort of inherently more expensive than an apple then maybe it's time for a different sense of personal responsibility and food choice because the choices are actually choices instead of three-quarters of the products being
Video examples
Ellen Gustafson: Obesity...
where we actually price the negative externalities like petrochemicals and like fertilizer runoff into the price of a bag of chips -- Well, if that bag of chips then becomes inherently more expensive than an apple, then maybe it's time for a different sense of personal responsibility in food choice because the choices are actually choices
Video examples
Put a value on nature! -...
dollars of externalities cost to business now that's not a happy situation for them but they have the confidence and the courage to come forward and say here's what we are measuring we are measuring it because we know that you cannot manage what you do not measure that's an example I think for us to look at and for us to draw
Video examples
Emily Oster: What do we...
Likewise, as we're developing policies to try to encourage exports, if we know there's this externality -- this extra thing that's going to happen as we increase exports -- we can think about what the right kinds of policies are. But it also tells us something about one of these things that we think that we know.
Video examples
Leyla Acaroglu: Paper...
They burn the electronic waste in open spaces. These are communities, and this is happening all over the world. And because we don't see the ramifications of the choices that we make as designers, as businesspeople, as consumers, then these kinds of externalities happen, and these are people's lives.
Video examples
How to build a greener,...
around the world of 215 trillion companies are beginning to measure their impacts their externalities and beginning to report them integrated reporting has been around for a bit but now here what we are seeing with these leading companies some of whom are my clients is that they are measuring
Video examples
Pavan Sukhdev: Put a...
And by the way, these are my favorites -- externalities calculation and green carbon markets. TEEB has more than a dozen separate groups of solutions including protected area evaluation and payments for ecosystem services and eco-certification and you name it, but these are the favorites.
Video examples
Al Gore: How to make...
That's why we need a price on carbon and a price on plastic pollution. It also leaves out positive externalities. So we’re chronically underinvesting in education and health care and environmental protection, pandemic preparedness. We're ignoring the depletion of resources like topsoil
Video examples
Jason Clay: How big...
and then you look at what the farmer was paid. If you divide the amount of water into what the farmer was paid, the farmer didn't receive enough money to pay a decent price for water in any of those commodities. That is an externality by definition.
Video examples
Chibeze Ezekiel: A...
But our experience shows that resistance is possible. How? By bringing into the conversation the adverse impacts and externalities of coal plants. Secondly, also by providing clean alternatives, and more importantly,
Video examples
Obesity + Hunger = 1...
negative externalities like petrochemicals and like fertilizer runoff into the price of a bag of chips well if that bag of chips then becomes sort of inherently more expensive than an apple then maybe it's time for a different sense of personal responsibility and food choice because the choices are actually choices instead of three-quarters of the products being
Video examples
Ellen Gustafson: Obesity...
where we actually price the negative externalities like petrochemicals and like fertilizer runoff into the price of a bag of chips -- Well, if that bag of chips then becomes inherently more expensive than an apple, then maybe it's time for a different sense of personal responsibility in food choice because the choices are actually choices
Video examples
Put a value on nature! -...
dollars of externalities cost to business now that's not a happy situation for them but they have the confidence and the courage to come forward and say here's what we are measuring we are measuring it because we know that you cannot manage what you do not measure that's an example I think for us to look at and for us to draw
Video examples
Emily Oster: What do we...
Likewise, as we're developing policies to try to encourage exports, if we know there's this externality -- this extra thing that's going to happen as we increase exports -- we can think about what the right kinds of policies are. But it also tells us something about one of these things that we think that we know.
Video examples
Leyla Acaroglu: Paper...
They burn the electronic waste in open spaces. These are communities, and this is happening all over the world. And because we don't see the ramifications of the choices that we make as designers, as businesspeople, as consumers, then these kinds of externalities happen, and these are people's lives.
Video examples
How to build a greener,...
around the world of 215 trillion companies are beginning to measure their impacts their externalities and beginning to report them integrated reporting has been around for a bit but now here what we are seeing with these leading companies some of whom are my clients is that they are measuring
Video examples
Pavan Sukhdev: Put a...
And by the way, these are my favorites -- externalities calculation and green carbon markets. TEEB has more than a dozen separate groups of solutions including protected area evaluation and payments for ecosystem services and eco-certification and you name it, but these are the favorites.
Video examples
Al Gore: How to make...
That's why we need a price on carbon and a price on plastic pollution. It also leaves out positive externalities. So we’re chronically underinvesting in education and health care and environmental protection, pandemic preparedness. We're ignoring the depletion of resources like topsoil
Video examples
Jason Clay: How big...
and then you look at what the farmer was paid. If you divide the amount of water into what the farmer was paid, the farmer didn't receive enough money to pay a decent price for water in any of those commodities. That is an externality by definition.
Video examples
Chibeze Ezekiel: A...
But our experience shows that resistance is possible. How? By bringing into the conversation the adverse impacts and externalities of coal plants. Secondly, also by providing clean alternatives, and more importantly,
Example 1 of 10
Quote examples
Elon Musk
South African Businessman
The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.
Quote examples
Barry Gardiner
British Politician
GDP has been a con perpetrated upon the poor of the world: a measure of economic activity and not of actual wealth. What it masks is the way in which we transform their natural capital into our consumption through international rules that regard the ecosystem services upon which they rely as mere externalities.
Quote examples
Sri Aurobindo
Indian Philosopher
India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.
Quote examples
Paul Polman
Dutch Businessman
Why would you invest in a company which is out of synch with the needs of society, that does not take its social compliance in its supply chain seriously, that does not think about the costs of externalities or of its negative impacts on society?
Quote examples
Hamza Yusuf
American Clergyman
ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam. It's not Islam; it's a perversion of Islam, and to label these militant externalities as Islam is to legitimize their actions.
Quote examples
Winnie Byanyima
Ugandan Politician
We treat a planet at crisis point as an externality that can be shunted into a future generation. We continue to act as if we had the natural resources of several planets, not one.
Quote examples
Matthew Yglesias
American Economist
I'm a liberal - I believe in subsidies for public goods and in regulations to curb harmful externalities, but neither of those things exist when it comes to parking.
Quote examples
Isabella Bird
English Explorer
It is extremely interesting to live in a private house and to see the externalities, at least, of domestic life in a Japanese middle-class home.
Quote examples
Noam Chomsky
American Activist
Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions on the environment.
Quote examples
Anthony Scaramucci
American Businessman
Good debt accrues assets that generate positive returns and externalities.
Quote examples
Elon Musk
South African Businessman
The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.
Quote examples
Barry Gardiner
British Politician
GDP has been a con perpetrated upon the poor of the world: a measure of economic activity and not of actual wealth. What it masks is the way in which we transform their natural capital into our consumption through international rules that regard the ecosystem services upon which they rely as mere externalities.
Quote examples
Sri Aurobindo
Indian Philosopher
India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.
Quote examples
Paul Polman
Dutch Businessman
Why would you invest in a company which is out of synch with the needs of society, that does not take its social compliance in its supply chain seriously, that does not think about the costs of externalities or of its negative impacts on society?
Quote examples
Hamza Yusuf
American Clergyman
ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam. It's not Islam; it's a perversion of Islam, and to label these militant externalities as Islam is to legitimize their actions.
Quote examples
Winnie Byanyima
Ugandan Politician
We treat a planet at crisis point as an externality that can be shunted into a future generation. We continue to act as if we had the natural resources of several planets, not one.
Quote examples
Matthew Yglesias
American Economist
I'm a liberal - I believe in subsidies for public goods and in regulations to curb harmful externalities, but neither of those things exist when it comes to parking.
Quote examples
Isabella Bird
English Explorer
It is extremely interesting to live in a private house and to see the externalities, at least, of domestic life in a Japanese middle-class home.
Quote examples
Noam Chomsky
American Activist
Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions on the environment.
Quote examples
Anthony Scaramucci
American Businessman
Good debt accrues assets that generate positive returns and externalities.
Example 1 of 10
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