The Value of Regulatory Discretion: Estimates From Environmental Inspections in India
Econometrica · 2018 · Esther Duflo、Michael A. Greenstone、Rohini Pande、Nicholas Ryan
中文摘要
尽管环境法规严格，许多发展中国家仍持续存在高污染。我们利用一项实地实验和一个结构模型来研究工厂排放标准是如何被执行的。我们与印度一家环境监管机构合作，通过实验将处理组工厂的检查频率提高了一倍，并要求额外检查被随机分配。我们发现处理组工厂仅略微提高了合规性。我们假设这一微弱效应源于目标定位不佳，因为处理组中的随机检查发现的极端违规者少于监管机构自身的自由裁量检查。为分解额外检查与取消对目标工厂的自由裁量权的作用，我们构建了一个环境监管模型，其中监管机构基于污染信号选择检查对象，以最大化工厂减排。利用该实验识别模型的关键参数，我们发现监管机构对其自由裁量检查进行了激进的目标定位，以至于半数工厂每年接受的检查不足一次，而预期最脏的工厂可能接受十次检查。反事实模拟表明，目标定位中的自由裁量有助于执法：监管机构指定的检查所促成的减排量是同等数量随机分配检查的三倍。尽管如此，我们发现监管机构关于工厂污染的信息较差，改善监测将减少排放。
Abstract
High pollution persists in many developing countries despite strict environmental rules.We use a field experiment and a structural model to study how plant emission standards are enforced.In collaboration with an Indian environmental regulator, we experimentally doubled the rate of inspection for treatment plants and required that the extra inspections be assigned randomly.We find that treatment plants only slightly increased compliance.We hypothesize that this weak effect is due to poor targeting, since the random inspections in the treatment found fewer extreme violators than the regulator's own discretionary inspections.To unbundle the roles of extra inspections and the removal of discretion over what plants to target, we set out a model of environmental regulation where the regulator targets inspections, based on a signal of pollution, to maximize plant abatement.Using the experiment to identify key parameters of the model, we find that the regulator aggressively targets its discretionary inspections, to the degree that half of plants receive fewer than one inspection per year, while plants expected to be the dirtiest may receive ten.Counterfactual simulations show that discretion in targeting helps enforcement: inspections that the regulator assigns cause three times more abatement than would the same number of randomly-assigned inspections.Nonetheless, we find that the regulator's information on plant pollution is poor, and improvements in monitoring would reduce emissions.