IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/pseptp/halshs-00754494.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Weak Enforcement of Environmental Policies: A Tale of Limited Commitment and Limited Fines

Author

Listed:
  • Yolande Hiriart

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IDEI - Institut d'Economie Industrielle - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse, LERNA - Economie des Ressources Naturelles - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - CEA - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives)

  • David Martimort

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IDEI - Institut d'Economie Industrielle - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse, GREMAQ - Groupe de recherche en économie mathématique et quantitative - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Jérôme Pouyet

    (PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

When a Ørm undertakes activities which are risky for the environment, the conflict between social and private incentives to exercise safety care requires imposing fines in case a damage occurs. Introducing asymmetric information on the firm's wealth, we show that the Ønes and probabilities of investigation are systematically too low compared to their optimal level under complete information. This eÆect is exacerbated when the public agency in charge can no longer commit to an investigation strategy. Compounding asymmetric information with a government failure provides a possible explanation of the significant trend in practice towards a weak enforcement of environmental policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Yolande Hiriart & David Martimort & Jérôme Pouyet, 2011. "Weak Enforcement of Environmental Policies: A Tale of Limited Commitment and Limited Fines," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754494, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-00754494
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Daiki Kishishita & Susumu Sato, 2021. "Optimal risk regulation of monopolists with subjective risk assessment," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 251-279, June.
    2. La Nauze, Andrea & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2019. "Dynamic incentive regulation of diffuse pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 101-124.

    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:hal:pseptp:halshs-00754494. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Caroline Bauer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.