IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jemstr/v18y2009i1p75-104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Averting Regulatory Enforcement: Evidence from New Source Review

Author

Listed:
  • Nathaniel O. Keohane
  • Erin T. Mansur
  • Andrey Voynov

Abstract

"This paper explores firms' response to regulatory enforcement. New Source Review (NSR), a provision of the Clean Air Act, imposes stringent emissions limitations on significantly modified older power plants. In 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sued owners of 46 plants for NSR violations. We study how electricity companies respond to both the perceived threat of future action, and the action itself. A discrete choice model estimates plants likelihood of being named in lawsuits increases with large historic emissions and investments. On the eve of the lawsuits, emissions at plants with a one standard deviation greater probability of being sued fell approximately 10%." Copyright (c) 2009, The Author(s) Journal Compilation (c) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..

Suggested Citation

  • Nathaniel O. Keohane & Erin T. Mansur & Andrey Voynov, 2009. "Averting Regulatory Enforcement: Evidence from New Source Review," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 75-104, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:18:y:2009:i:1:p:75-104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/servlet/useragent?func=synergy&synergyAction=showTOC&journalCode=jems&volume=18&issue=1&year=2009&part=null
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laplante, Benoit & Rilstone, Paul, 1996. "Environmental Inspections and Emissions of the Pulp and Paper Industry in Quebec," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 19-36, July.
    2. Lyon,Thomas P. & Maxwell,John W., 2004. "Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521819473, June.
    3. Maloney, Michael T & Brady, Gordon L, 1988. "Capital Turnover and Marketable Pollution Rights," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 203-226, April.
    4. Nelson, Randy A, 1984. "Regulation, Capital Vintage, and Technical Change in the Electric Utility Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 59-69, February.
    5. Bartel, Ann P & Thomas, Lacy Glenn, 1985. "Direct and Indirect Effects of Regulation: A New Look at OSHA's Impact," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 1-25, April.
    6. Magat, Wesley A & Viscusi, W Kip, 1990. "Effectiveness of the EPA's Regulatory Enforcement: The Case of Industrial Effluent Standards," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(2), pages 331-360, October.
    7. Glachant, Matthieu, 2007. "Non-binding voluntary agreements," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 32-48, July.
    8. Maxwell, John W & Lyon, Thomas P & Hackett, Steven C, 2000. "Self-Regulation and Social Welfare: The Political Economy of Corporate Environmentalism," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 583-617, October.
    9. Anton, W.R.Q.Wilma Rose Q. & Deltas, George & Khanna, Madhu, 2004. "Incentives for environmental self-regulation and implications for environmental performance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 632-654, July.
    10. Lyon, Thomas P. & Maxwell, John W., 2003. "Self-regulation, taxation and public voluntary environmental agreements," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1453-1486, August.
    11. Nelson, Randy A & Tietenberg, Tom & Donihue, Michael R, 1993. "Differential Environmental Regulation: Effects on Electric Utility Capital Turnover and Emissions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 368-373, May.
    12. Gray, Wayne B. & Deily, Mary E., 1996. "Compliance and Enforcement: Air Pollution Regulation in the U.S. Steel Industry," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 96-111, July.
    13. Murphy, Kevin M & Topel, Robert H, 2002. "Estimation and Inference in Two-Step Econometric Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 88-97, January.
    14. Juan-Pablo Montero, 1999. "Voluntary Compliance with Market-Based Environmental Policy: Evidence from the U.S. Acid Rain Program," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(5), pages 998-1033, October.
    15. List John A. & Millimet Daniel L & McHone Warren, 2004. "The Unintended Disincentive in the Clean Air Act," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-28, February.
    16. Lutz, Stefan & Lyon, Thomas P & Maxwell, John W, 2000. "Quality Leadership When Regulatory Standards Are Forthcoming," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 331-348, September.
    17. Lence, Sergio H., 2006. "The Economic Effects of Vintage Differentiated Regulations: The Case of New Source Review," Staff General Research Papers Archive 13132, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    18. Eckert, Heather, 2004. "Inspections, warnings, and compliance: the case of petroleum storage regulation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 232-259, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bushnell, James & Wolfram, Catherine, 2008. "Enforcement of Vintage Differentiated Regulations: The Case of New Source Review," Staff General Research Papers Archive 31185, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    2. Ian Lange & Joshua Linn, 2008. "Bush v. Gore and the Effect of New Source Review on Power Plant Emissions," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 40(4), pages 571-591, August.
    3. Joshua Linn & Erin Mastrangelo & Dallas Burtraw, 2014. "Regulating Greenhouse Gases from Coal Power Plants under the Clean Air Act," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 97-134.
    4. Meredith Fowlie & Stephen P. Holland & Erin T. Mansur, 2012. "What Do Emissions Markets Deliver and to Whom? Evidence from Southern California's NOx Trading Program," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 965-993, April.
    5. Calcott, Paul, 2012. "Regulatory triggers and New Source Review," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 337-348.
    6. Bushnell, James B. & Wolfram, Catherine D., 2012. "Enforcement of vintage differentiated regulations: The case of new source review," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 137-152.
    7. Jinghui Lim, 2016. "The impact of monitoring and enforcement on air pollutant emissions," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 203-222, April.
    8. Wayne B. Gray & Jay P. Shimshack, 2011. "The Effectiveness of Environmental Monitoring and Enforcement: A Review of the Empirical Evidence," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 5(1), pages 3-24, Winter.
    9. Peter Maniloff, 2016. "Bayesian Learning and Regulatory Deterrence: Evidence from Oil and Gas Production," Working Papers 2016-04, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.
    10. Alm, James & Shimshack, Jay, 2014. "Environmental Enforcement and Compliance: Lessons from Pollution, Safety, and Tax Settings," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 10(4), pages 209-274, December.
    11. Elaine F. Frey, 2013. "Technology Diffusion and Environmental Regulation: The Adoption of Scrubbers by Coal-Fired Power Plants," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    12. Mieno, Taro & Brozovic, Nicholas, 2012. "Unraveling deterrence effects of regulatory activities under Clean Water Act," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124612, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. Linn, Joshua & Mastrangelo, Erin & Burtraw, Dallas, 2013. "Regulating Greenhouse Gases from Coal Power Plants under the Clean Air Act," Discussion Papers dp-13-05, Resources For the Future.
    14. repec:eee:enepol:v:106:y:2017:i:c:p:222-232 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Heutel, Garth, 2011. "Plant vintages, grandfathering, and environmental policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 36-51, January.
    16. repec:kap:regeco:v:51:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11149-016-9314-6 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:18:y:2009:i:1:p:75-104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wiley Content Delivery) or (Christopher F. Baum). General contact details of provider: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/journals/JEMS/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.