IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v78y2021i2d10.1007_s10640-020-00530-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Enforcement Federalism: Comparing the Effectiveness of Federal Punishment versus State Punishment

Author

Listed:
  • Dietrich Earnhart

    (University of Kansas)

  • Lana Friesen

    (University of Queensland)

Abstract

Responsibility for enforcing environmental protection laws often falls on both federal and state agencies. We investigate whether enforcement and monitoring taken by the federal agency—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—and enforcement and monitoring actions taken by U.S. state environmental agencies differentially affect the compliance behavior of pollution point sources regulated under the U.S. Clean Water Act. Our results demonstrate that federal inspections are more effective than state inspections, yet state fines are more effective than federal fines, at inducing compliance with Clean Water Act-imposed discharge limits.

Suggested Citation

  • Dietrich Earnhart & Lana Friesen, 2021. "Enforcement Federalism: Comparing the Effectiveness of Federal Punishment versus State Punishment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 78(2), pages 227-255, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:78:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10640-020-00530-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-020-00530-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-020-00530-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-020-00530-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fehr, Ernst & Falk, Armin, 2002. "Psychological foundations of incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 687-724, May.
    2. Gray, Wayne B. & Shadbegian, R.J.Ronald J., 2004. "'Optimal' pollution abatement--whose benefits matter, and how much?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 510-534, May.
    3. Eide, Erling & Rubin, Paul H. & Shepherd, Joanna M., 2006. "Economics of Crime," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 205-279, December.
    4. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. James T. Hamilton, 1993. "Politics and Social Costs: Estimating the Impact of Collective Action on Hazardous Waste Facilities," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(1), pages 101-125, Spring.
    6. Helland, Eric, 1998. "The Revealed Preferences of State EPAs: Stringency, Enforcement, and Substitution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 242-261, May.
    7. George J. Stigler, 1971. "The Theory of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 2(1), pages 3-21, Spring.
    8. Daniel L. Millimet, 2003. "Assessing the Empirical Impact of Environmental Federalism," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 711-733, November.
    9. Nakamura, Masao & Takahashi, Takuya & Vertinsky, Ilan, 2001. "Why Japanese Firms Choose to Certify: A Study of Managerial Responses to Environmental Issues," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 23-52, July.
    10. Chang, Howard F. & Sigman, Hilary & Traub, Leah G., 2014. "Endogenous decentralization in federal environmental policies," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 39-50.
    11. Matthew Gibson, 2019. "Regulation-Induced Pollution Substitution," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(5), pages 827-840, December.
    12. 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.
    13. Deily, Mary E. & Gray, Wayne B., 1991. "Enforcement of pollution regulations in a declining industry," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 260-274, November.
    14. Dietrich Earnhart & Lana Friesen, 2013. "Can Punishment Generate Specific Deterrence Without Updating? Analysis of a Stated Choice Scenario," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 56(3), pages 379-397, November.
    15. Earnhart, Dietrich & Friesen, Lana, 2017. "The Effects of Regulated Facilities' Perceptions About the Effectiveness of Government Interventions on Environmental Compliance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 282-294.
    16. Hilary Sigman, 1998. "Midnight Dumping: Public Policies and Illegal Disposal of Used Oil," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(1), pages 157-178, Spring.
    17. Sigman, Hilary, 2003. "Letting States Do the Dirty Work: State Responsibility for Federal Environmental Regulation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 56(1), pages 107-122, March.
    18. Scholz, John T & Gray, Wayne B, 1990. "OSHA Enforcement and Workplace Injuries: A Behavioral Approach to Risk Assessment," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 3(3), pages 283-305, September.
    19. Böhringer, Christoph & Rivers, Nicholas & Yonezawa, Hidemichi, 2016. "Vertical fiscal externalities and the environment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 51-74.
    20. Kozo Horiuchi & Masao Nakamura, 2001. "Environmental Issues and Japanese Firms," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Masao Nakamura (ed.), The Japanese Business and Economic System, chapter 13, pages 364-384, Palgrave Macmillan.
    21. Bruno S. Frey & Reto Jegen, 2001. "Motivation Crowding Theory," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(5), pages 589-611, December.
    22. Oljaca, Neda & Keeler, Andrew G & Dorfman, Jeffrey, 1998. "Penalty Functions for Environmental Violations: Evidence from Water Quality Enforcement," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 255-264, November.
    23. Nadeau, Louis W., 1997. "EPA Effectiveness at Reducing the Duration of Plant-Level Noncompliance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 54-78, September.
    24. Sah, Raaj K, 1991. "Social Osmosis and Patterns of Crime," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(6), pages 1272-1295, December.
    25. John A. List & Shelby Gerking, 2000. "Regulatory Federalism and Environmental Protection in the United States," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(3), pages 453-471, August.
    26. Shimshack, Jay P. & Ward, Michael B., 2005. "Regulator reputation, enforcement, and environmental compliance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 519-540, November.
    27. Earnhart, Dietrich & Segerson, Kathleen, 2012. "The influence of financial status on the effectiveness of environmental enforcement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 670-684.
    28. David M. Konisky, 2007. "Regulatory Competition and Environmental Enforcement: Is There a Race to the Bottom?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 853-872, October.
    29. 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.
    30. Anderson, Lisa R & Stafford, Sarah L, 2003. "Punishment in a Regulatory Setting: Experimental Evidence from the VCM," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 91-110, July.
    31. Eric Helland, 1998. "The Enforcement Of Pollution Control Laws: Inspections, Violations, And Self-Reporting," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 141-153, February.
    32. Bandyopadhyay Sushenjit & Horowitz John, 2006. "Do Plants Overcomply with Water Pollution Regulations? The Role of Discharge Variability," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 1-32, January.
    33. Dietrich Earnhart, 2009. "The influence of facility characteristics and permit conditions on the effectiveness of environmental regulatory deterrence," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 247-273, December.
    34. 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.
    35. Helland, Eric & Whitford, Andrew B., 2003. "Pollution incidence and political jurisdiction: evidence from the TRI," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 403-424, November.
    36. Sigman, Hilary, 2005. "Transboundary spillovers and decentralization of environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 82-101, July.
    37. Søren C. Winter & Peter J. May, 2001. "Motivation for Compliance with Environmental Regulations," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(4), pages 675-698.
    38. Lana Friesen, 2012. "Certainty of Punishment versus Severity of Punishment: An Experimental Investigation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(2), pages 399-421, October.
    39. Earnhart, Dietrich & Harrington, Donna Ramirez, 2014. "Effect of audits on the extent of compliance with wastewater discharge limits," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 243-261.
    40. Samuel Bowles & Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2012. "Economic Incentives and Social Preferences: Substitutes or Complements?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 368-425, June.
    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. Earnhart, Dietrich & Friesen, Lana, 2021. "Use of competitive endogenous audit mechanisms by federal and state inspectors within environmental protection agencies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).

    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. Earnhart, Dietrich & Friesen, Lana, 2017. "The Effects of Regulated Facilities' Perceptions About the Effectiveness of Government Interventions on Environmental Compliance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 282-294.
    2. Thomas J. Miceli & Kathleen Segerson & Dietrich Earnhart, 2022. "The role of experience in deterring crime: A theory of specific versus general deterrence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(4), pages 1833-1853, October.
    3. Zach Raff & Dietrich Earnhart, 2018. "Effect Of Cooperative Enforcement Strategies On Wastewater Management," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(2), pages 1357-1379, April.
    4. Earnhart, Dietrich & Friesen, Lana, 2021. "Use of competitive endogenous audit mechanisms by federal and state inspectors within environmental protection agencies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    5. Raff, Zach & Earnhart, Dietrich, 2019. "The effects of Clean Water Act enforcement on environmental employment," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1-17.
    6. Zach Raff & Dietrich Earnhart, 2020. "The effect of environmental enforcement on labor: environmental workers and production workers," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 118-133, April.
    7. Earnhart, Dietrich, 2020. "Stated choices of environmental managers: The role of punishment," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    8. Lana Friesen & Dietrich Earnhart, 2012. "Environmental Management Responses to Punishment: Specific Deterrence and Certainty versus Severity of Punishment," Discussion Papers Series 463, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    9. 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.
    10. Jay P. Shimshack, 2014. "The Economics of Environmental Monitoring and Enforcement," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 339-360, October.
    11. Earnhart, Dietrich & Segerson, Kathleen, 2012. "The influence of financial status on the effectiveness of environmental enforcement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 670-684.
    12. 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.
    13. Wayne B. Gray & Ronald J. Shadbegian, 2007. "The Environmental Performance Of Polluting Plants: A Spatial Analysis," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 63-84, February.
    14. Millimet, Daniel L., 2013. "Environmental Federalism: A Survey of the Empirical Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 7831, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Jodi L. Short, 2021. "The politics of regulatory enforcement and compliance: Theorizing and operationalizing political influences," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(3), pages 653-685, July.
    16. Júlia Gallego Ziero Uhr & André Luis Squarize Chagas, Daniel de Abreu Pereira Uhr, Renan Porn Peres, 2017. "A study on environmental infractions for Brazilian municipalities: a spatial dynamic panel approach," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2017_13, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    17. Earnhart, Dietrich & Harrington, Donna Ramirez, 2014. "Effect of audits on the extent of compliance with wastewater discharge limits," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 243-261.
    18. Anna Rita Germani & Pasquale Scaramozzino & Andrea Morone & Piergiuseppe Morone, 2017. "Discretionary enforcement and strategic interactions between enforcement agencies and firms: a theoretical and laboratory investigation," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 255-284, December.
    19. Dietrich Earnhart & Paul J. Ferraro, 2021. "The Effect of Peer Comparisons on Polluters: A Randomized Field Experiment among Wastewater Dischargers," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 79(4), pages 627-652, August.
    20. Takayoshi Shinkuma & Shunsuke Managi, 2012. "Effectiveness of policy against illegal disposal of waste," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 14(2), pages 123-145, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Enforcement; Monitoring; Inspections; Compliance; Wastewater;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K32 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Energy, Environmental, Health, and Safety Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    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:kap:enreec:v:78:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10640-020-00530-0. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.