Three essays on environmental enforcement /
Two different types of environmental enforcement problems are considered. The first concerns the problems facing a regulatory agency that has jurisdiction over polluters. The second problem occurs when there is no regulatory agency with jurisdiction over polluters. The first type of problem conce...
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
1996.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=743149191&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | Two different types of environmental enforcement problems are considered. The first concerns the problems facing a regulatory agency that has jurisdiction over polluters. The second problem occurs when there is no regulatory agency with jurisdiction over polluters. The first type of problem concerns how the various enforcement policy instruments (monitoring probability, magnitude of fines, and environmental standard) are set by the regulatory agency. It is found that the agency has enough degrees of freedom in setting overall environmental policy that the size of the agency's budget does not matter. Since the agency's objective is likely to differ from society's objective, however, the environmental policy followed by the agency does not yield the social welfare-maximizing combination of output and pollution. The social optimum can be reached, though, if the environmental standard is set not by the agency but by some social welfare-maximizing overseeing authority. In this case, the overseeing authority sets the standard and the agency's budget in a way which makes the agency behave as if it minimizes violations. The second type of problem concerns whether an agreement between two sovereign entities, such as two countries or even two states, is self-enforcing. Modelling the problem as an infinitely-repeated game, it is found that if the entities are identical in terms of their production technology and damage functions, the joint-welfare maximizing solution and Nash bargaining solution can be supported as a subgarne perfect equilibrium, while Markusen's "cooperative equilibrium" is not viable even in the case of identical entities. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Economics". |
| Physical Description: | viii, 54 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilms Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |