IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cte/werepe/6099.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Enviromental standards and costly monitoring

Author

Listed:
  • Arguedas, Carmen

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the features of an optimal regulatory policy composed of pollution standards and probabilities of inspection to verify firms' behavior, where fines for noncompliance depend on the degree of violation. We find that the optimal policy can entail either compliance or noncompliance with the enviromental standards, the latter being more plausible when monitoring costs are high and, surprisingly, when fines for noncompliance are also high. In the event the planner has perfect information about the firns, we find that, whe the optimal policy entails noncompliance, the optimal standard is always equal to zero, suggesting the superiority of probabilistic environmental taxes versus positive standards. However this is no longer true when the planner has incomplete information about the regulated agents.

Suggested Citation

  • Arguedas, Carmen, 1999. "Enviromental standards and costly monitoring," UC3M Working papers. Economics 6099, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    • Handle: RePEc:cte:werepe:6099
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/handle/10016/6099/we990201.PDF?sequence=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sanchez, Isabel & Sobel, Joel, 1993. "Hierarchical design and enforcement of income tax policies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 345-369, March.
    2. Polinsky, A Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1992. "Enforcement Costs and the Optimal Magnitude and Probability of Fines," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 133-148, April.
    3. Macho-Stadler, Ines & Perez-Castrillo, J David, 1997. "Optimal Auditing with Heterogeneous Income," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(4), pages 951-968, November.
    4. Polinsky, A Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1991. "A Note on Optimal Fines When Wealth Varies among Individuals," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 618-621, June.
    5. Shavell, Steven, 1992. "A note on marginal deterrence," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 345-355, September.
    6. Dilip Mookherjee & Ivan Png, 1989. "Optimal Auditing, Insurance, and Redistribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 399-415.
    7. Carol Adaire Jones, 1989. "Standard setting with incomplete enforcement revisited," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 72-87.
    8. Downing, Paul B. & Watson, William Jr., 1974. "The economics of enforcing air pollution controls," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 219-236, November.
    9. Reinganum, Jennifer F & Wilde, Louis L, 1986. "Equilibrium Verification and Reporting Policies in a Model of Tax Compliance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 27(3), pages 739-760, October.
    10. Amacher, Gregory S. & Malik, Arun S., 1996. "Bargaining in Environmental Regulation and the Ideal Regulator," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 233-253, March.
    11. Ignacio Ortuño Ortín, 1992. "Inspection in models of adverse selection," Working Papers. Serie AD 1992-01, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    12. Reinganum, Jennifer F. & Wilde, Louis L., 1985. "Income tax compliance in a principal-agent framework," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-18, February.
    13. Kaplow, Louis, 1990. "Optimal Deterrence, Uninformed Individuals, and Acquiring Information about Whether Acts Are Subject to Sanctions," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 93-128, Spring.
    14. Harford, Jon D., 1978. "Firm behavior under imperfectly enforceable pollution standards and taxes," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 26-43, March.
    15. Kambhu, John, 1989. "Regulatory Standards, Noncompliance and Enforcement," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 103-114, June.
    16. John Kambhu, 1989. "Regulatory standards, noncompliance and enforcement," Research Paper 8902, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    17. Polinsky, Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1979. "The Optimal Tradeoff between the Probability and Magnitude of Fines," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 880-891, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carmen Arguedas, 2008. "To Comply or Not To Comply? Pollution Standard Setting Under Costly Monitoring and Sanctioning," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 41(2), pages 155-168, October.
    2. Carmen Arguedas & Francisco Cabo & Guiomar Martín-Herrán, 2017. "Optimal Pollution Standards and Non-compliance in a Dynamic Framework," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(3), pages 537-567, November.
    3. Garvie, Devon & Keeler, Andrew, 1993. "Incomplete Enforcement with Endogenous Regulatory Choice," Queen's Institute for Economic Research Discussion Papers 275224, Queen's University - Department of Economics.
    4. BRYAN C. McCANNON, 2009. "Differentiating Between First And Repeat Offenses," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 27(1), pages 76-85, January.
    5. Steven Shavell & A. Mitchell Polinsky, 2000. "The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 45-76, March.
    6. Polinsky, A. Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 2007. "The Theory of Public Enforcement of Law," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 403-454, Elsevier.
    7. Rousseau, Sandra, 2009. "Empirical Analysis of Sanctions for Environmental Offenses," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 3(3), pages 161-194, December.
    8. Arguedas, Carmen & Rousseau, Sandra, 2009. "A note on the complementarity of uniform emission standards and monitoring strategies," Working Papers 2009/12, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    9. Arguedas, Carmen & Rousseau, Sandra, 2012. "Learning about compliance under asymmetric information," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 55-73.
    10. Jordi Caballé & Judith Panadés, 2005. "Cost Uncertainty and Taxpayer Compliance," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(3), pages 239-263, May.
    11. Bayer, Ralph-C., 2006. "A contest with the taxman - the impact of tax rates on tax evasion and wastefully invested resources," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 1071-1104, July.
    12. Inés Macho-Stadler & David Pérez-Castrillo, 2010. "Optimal monitoring to implement clean technologies when pollution is random," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 277-304, July.
    13. Arguedas, Carmen, 2005. "Bargaining in environmental regulation revisited," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 422-433, September.
    14. Ya-Po Yang & Jin-Li Hu, 2012. "Gresham’s law in environmental protection," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 14(2), pages 103-122, April.
    15. Duccio Gamannossi degl’Innocenti & Matthew D. Rablen, 2017. "Tax avoidance and optimal income tax enforcement," IFS Working Papers W17/08, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    16. Kritikos, Alexander S., 2004. "A penalty system to enforce policy measures under incomplete information," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 385-403, September.
    17. Eduardo Zilberman, 2016. "Audits or Distortions: The Optimal Scheme to Enforce Self-Employment Income Taxes," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 18(4), pages 511-544, August.
    18. Inés Macho Stadler & David Perez-Castrillo, 2005. "Optimal inspection policy and income-tax compliance," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 173(2), pages 9-45, June.
    19. Slemrod, Joel & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 2002. "Tax avoidance, evasion, and administration," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 22, pages 1423-1470, Elsevier.
    20. Rousseau, Sandra & Telle, Kjetil, 2010. "On the existence of the optimal fine for environmental crime," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 329-337, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    standard-setting;

    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:cte:werepe:6099. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ana Poveda (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.eco.uc3m.es/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.