This article reviews and develops theoretical and empirical representations of economic incentives for implementing pollution control strategies. A number of alternative economic instruments exist, which, if applied internationally, could encourage implementation of abatement strategies by countries. The article considers means of persuading countries to minimize abatement costs. A comparison between the pollution targets achieved by the imposition of a uniform charge rate and by differentiated charge rates is discussed, and empirical results are provided with associated conclusions. These results are compared with a simple standards setting in the form of critical lends, in order to assess empirically if economic instruments work better than regulations.