Pollution abatement with limited enforcement power and citizen suits |
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Authors: | Christian Langpap |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Economics, Tulane University, Tilton Hall 308, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA |
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Abstract: | Federal environmental laws in the U.S. can be enforced by government agencies or by private parties through citizen suits
against polluters. Here, I extend the standard enforcement model to examine the role played by citizen suits. The main results
from the paper suggest that in a model with limited enforcement power and citizen suits the regulator fully exercises his
enforcement power when the expected penalty from a citizen suit is low, but increases his reliance on citizen suits as the
expected penalty rises. Whether an enforcement regime that allows private enforcement is efficient depends not only on the
relative costs of private and agency enforcement, but also on the changes in inspection costs that may be caused by private
enforcement and the expected penalty from losing a citizen suit. These results suggest that in practice private enforcement
may lower social costs as long as relatively inexpensive agency enforcement options, such as administrative proceedings, do
not preclude citizen suits.
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Keywords: | Pollution control Environmental regulation Compliance Self-reporting Enforcement Citizen suits |
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