Concept

Internalizing an Externality

An externality is internalized when a decision-maker takes into account the external costs or benefits of their actions. For instance, if a single company were to own both a banana plantation using pesticides and a fishery harmed by the resulting pollution, it would naturally consider the pollution's negative financial impact on the fishery when deciding on pesticide use. This joint ownership would lead the company to weigh the profits from bananas against the losses in fishing, effectively making the external cost an internal one. The externality problem itself arises because such entities are typically under separate ownership.

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Updated 2026-05-02

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