This paper explores empirically the impact of enforcement efforts on environmental compliance, focusing on the role of regulator reputation spillover effects. We find that, on the margin, the impact of a fine for water pollutant violations is about a two-thirds reduction in the statewide...

Axbard and Deng (2024) exploit the rollout of new pollution monitors in China in 2015 in 177 medium-size cities to study the effect of air-quality monitors on enforcement actions by local governments and air quality. In their main difference-in-difference analysis, they identify the change in...

Economic theory developed in the prior literature indicates that under the joint and several liability imposed by the federal Superfund statute, the government should recover more of its costs of cleaning up contaminated sites than it would under nonjoint liability, and the amount recovered...

Hedonic property value models are often used to place a value on localized amenities and disamenities. In practice, however, results may be affected by (i) omitted variable bias and (ii) whether homebuyers and sellers are aware of, and respond to, the assumed environmental measure. In this paper...

In Mexico, voluntary environmental incentive programs such as the Clean Industry certificates are hugely complementary to the traditional command-and-control regulations. Due to the limited resources of the regulatory agency, enrollment in voluntary programs offers the incentive of public...

The exposure of rural communities to illegal waste dumping practices associated with the lack of or poor waste collection schemes prior to the closure of rural dumpsites under EU regulations and the role of collection efficiency afterward in reducing this critical environmental threat...

This paper explores the extent to which emissions limits on stack concentrations under the Large Combustion Plant (LCP) Directive succeeded in mitigating local air pollutants from thermal power stations in the European Union. We take advantage of the discontinuities in regulation status to show...

This paper studies whether firms shift some pollution from regulated reporting facilities to their non-reporting facilities after the US Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP). Using remotely sensed satellite data, I find that, after the disclosure mandate, PM 2.5 concentration dropped by 6%...

One of the first actions of the Environmental Protection Agency after the declaration of the COVID-19 crisis in mid-March 2020 was to announce that it would relax its enforcement policies with respect to environmental reporting and violations during the time of the pandemic. Ostensibly this was...

Despite the 21st century being more educated, richer, healthier, peaceful and better connected than the previous centuries, a negligent happening of the past - Exxon Valdez oil-spill of 1989 still looms, hovers and monitors our actions today. Though it is not the largest oil spill recorded, the...