IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/regeco/v13y1998i2p121-37.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental Protection, Agency Motivations, and Rent Extraction: The Regulation of Water Pollution in Louisiana

Author

Listed:
  • Kleit, Andrew N
  • Pierce, Meredith A
  • Hill, R Carter

Abstract

Direct environmental regulation has been in place in the United States for more than twenty-five years yet there has been little study of what actually affects regulatory enforcement levels. This study examines enforcement issues by focusing on water quality enforcement by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. The study finds that penalties are more likely to occur, and are likely to be higher, the more serious a firm's violation of a regulation. Penalties are also more likely, and likely to be higher, if a firm has a previous record of environmental violations. In contrast to other studies, however, we do not find that enforcement varies across regional offices. In addition, we did not find any systematic effects of the Weingast and Moran (1983) theory of legislative dominance. We did, however, find evidence of rent extraction, along the lines of McChesney (1987; 1991). Copyright 1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Kleit, Andrew N & Pierce, Meredith A & Hill, R Carter, 1998. "Environmental Protection, Agency Motivations, and Rent Extraction: The Regulation of Water Pollution in Louisiana," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 121-137, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:regeco:v:13:y:1998:i:2:p:121-37
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0922-680X/contents
    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 search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Carole M. Billiet & Thomas Blondiau & Sandra Rousseau, 2014. "Punishing environmental crimes: An empirical study from lower courts to the court of appeal," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(4), pages 472-496, December.
    3. André, Francisco J. & Sokri, Abderrahmane & Zaccour, Georges, 2011. "Public Disclosure Programs vs. traditional approaches for environmental regulation: Green goodwill and the policies of the firm," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 212(1), pages 199-212, July.
    4. 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.
    5. Jonathan Colmer & Mary F. Evans & Jay Shimshack, 2023. "Environmental citizen complaints," CEP Discussion Papers dp1903, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    6. 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.
    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. Heyes, Anthony, 2002. "A Theory of Filtered Enforcement," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 34-46, January.
    9. Shimshack, Jay P. & Ward, Michael B., 2022. "Costly sanctions and the treatment of frequent violators in regulatory settings," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    10. Rousseau Sandra, 2007. "The Impact of Sanctions and Inspections on Firms’ Environmental Compliance Decisions," Energy, Transport and Environment Working Papers Series ete0704, KU Leuven, Department of Economics - Research Group Energy, Transport and Environment.
    11. Stafford, Sarah L., 2002. "The Effect of Punishment on Firm Compliance with Hazardous Waste Regulations," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 290-308, September.
    12. Arguedas, Carmen & Cabo, Francisco & Martín-Herrán, Guiomar, 2020. "Enforcing regulatory standards in stock pollution problems," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    13. Calel, Raphael & Dechezlepretre, Antoine & Venmans, Frank, 2023. "Policing carbon markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120565, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Aaron A. Elrod & Serkan Karadas & Katherine C. Theyson, 2019. "The effect of gubernatorial political parties on monitoring and enforcement of federal environmental regulation: evidence from the Clean Water Act," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 21(2), pages 171-202, April.
    15. Caroline Cecot, 2021. "The Federal Enforcement Threat: The Effect of Overfiling Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(3), pages 534-568, September.
    16. Christopher S. Decker, 2007. "Flexible enforcement and fine adjustment," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(4), pages 312-328, December.
    17. McChesney Fred S., 1998. "Devaluing Deregulation," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 8(4), pages 379-400, December.

    More about this item

    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:regeco:v:13:y:1998:i:2:p:121-37. 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: 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.