the effect of punishment on firm compliance with hazardous waste regulations abstract this paper examines the effect of epa s dramatic 1991 increase in the penalties associated with violations of hazardous waste regulations on firm compliance although data from epa s rcra information system show an increase in detected violations after the penalty change once inspection levels are incorporated into the analysis through a censored bivariate probit model i find that violations have decreased since the penalty change however the decrease in violations appears small relative to the increase in recommended penalty levels i also find evidence that the likelihoods of inspection and compliance vary significantly across regions

symbiosis vs crowding out the interaction of formal and informal credit markets in developing countries abstract it is a common observation in many developing countries that enterprises are active borrowers in both formal and informal credit markets we propose a model in which the formal sector s superior ability in deposit mobilization is traded off against the informational advantage that lenders in the informal sector enjoy the formal sector can screen borrowers by providing only partial financing for projects thereby forcing borrowers to resort to the informal sector for the remainder of the loan we use the model to predict how the market structure responds to changes in the environment and we consider the policy implications of various forms of government intervention

the sopranos redux the empirical economics of waste crime almer c and goeschl t the sopranos redux the empirical economics of waste crime regional studies evidence for the argument that enforcement makes environmental policies effective is limited with respect to geography scope enforcement tools and regulatory context non us evidence on criminal enforcement of illegal waste disposal is examined using a panel dataset of 44 counties from the german state of baden wurttemberg for the period 1995 2005 the results support the pro enforcement argument cumulatively there is clear evidence for a general deterrence effect of enforcement intensity on the amount of waste crime however regional economic and political economy factors matter significantly for environmental outcomes violations appear to be treated differently depending on their local political economy context

unemployment and female labour supply the definition of labour force participation in the standard labour supply model stands in sharp contrast to that used in compiling the labour force statistics in the labour supply models only those supplying positive hours of work are considered to be labour force participants on the other hand participation in the labour force statistics is often defined to include not only those supplying positive hours but also those actively searching for work this paper is an attempt to reconcile these concepts by allowing unemployed workers to enter a generalisation of the standard labour supply model this turns out to be a convenient way to enter demand side factors directly into the determination of an individual s labour market position the model is applied with some success to the working behaviour of married women in the uk family expenditure survey

the dynamic study on firm s environmental behavior and influencing factors an adaptive agent based modeling approach employing an adaptive agent based modeling approach the present study explored the evolvement of firms environmental behavior and influencing factors using empirical data from 167 firms in china the simulation results revealed that firms environmental behavior followed this evolvement path defensive behavior preventive behavior and enthusiastic behavior computational experiments indicated that with increased financial ability and level of environmental preparedness the number of firms in all three categories of environmental behavior increased and so did their profits with increased public pressure the number of firms with defensive environmental behavior and their profits decreased but the number of firms with preventive and enthusiastic environmental behavior and their profits increased on the other hand when managers education level increased the number of firms with defensive behavior deceased but their profits increased slightly though the number of firms with preventive and enthusiastic behavior and their profits increased sharply in addition with the increased regulation level the number of firms with a different category of environmental behavior and their profits decreased finally with increased financial subsidy and market share the number of firms with different behavior and their profits were modified slightly

panel data analysis of regulatory factors shaping environmental performance this is the publisher s version also available electronically from http www mitpressjournals org doi abs 10 1162 003465304323023895 u1q6giuvdgi

regulatory errors optimal fines and the level of compliance abstract this paper shows that with a hierarchical structure of enforcement regulatory errors cause the optimal penalty to be non maximal even if offenders are risk neutral and fines are pure transfers and the private benefit from violation is strictly less than the social cost for all individuals in contrast with error free monitoring no finite fine is optimal within the same hierarchical structure also full compliance is an equilibrium outcome in the presence of errors whereas in the absence of errors the regulator can achieve only partial compliance

the ces utility function non linear budget constraints and labour supply results on female participation and hours the most recent efforts in the study of labour supply decisions have concentrated on the estimation of explicit utility indices as a means to overcome the specification and endogeneity problems created by non linear budget constraints the presence of non convexities and the interest in making welfare comparisons between individuals are additional reasons that make the use of explicit utility functions in either direct or indirect form an essential requirement for labour supply studies it is therefore important to consider carefully the available possibilities from a utility index we want flexibility and ease of estimation the stonegeary function has proved its relative worth in consumption studies but its performance has been disappointing when leisure is incorporated into the set of commodities abbot and ashenfelter i976 found that for part of their sample estimated available time was less than hours worked and these results have pervasively reappeared in subsequent studies using this function hausman i980 has recently proposed a utility function which yields a linear hours function this is an important contribution which facilitates the task of estimation enormously this paper argues that the ces utility function despite not generating a linear hours function is also very convenient for estimation purposes in fact it is shown below that to estimate the parameters of the utility function there is no need whatsoever for any explicit hours function labour supply responses by married women have been previously estimated with british data but none of the available results has taken full account of the joint decision on participation and hours and of the non linear shape of the budget constraint that the tax system generates layard et al i980 consider the joint decision in their estimation procedure but ignore the tax system greenhalgh i980 takes into account the non linearity of the budget constraint but estimates labour supply responses by a method which treats participation and hours of work as separate and independent decisions in the present paper on the other hand using an explicit utility index we propose an estimation method which takes into account both the tax system and the joint hours participation decision

married women s hours and participation revisited elasticity estimates are presented for participation and hours of work for a sample of married women in the social change and economic life initiative sceli 1986 data set a logit model is used to estimate the participation function and a tobit model is employed to estimate an hours of work equation the results are in agreement with the evidence available for the uk the own wage hours of work elasticity is found to be relatively elastic with negligible effects detected for non labour income and the husband or spouse s wage the effects on participation of an unemployed husband or spouse were examined and found to have a strong negative effect

optimal non linear income taxation for the alleviation of income poverty there has been much discussion recently of structuring tax and transfer programs to ensure that resources go to the poor with minimal leaks to the nonpoor the poor have no incentive to earn income with 100 percent marginal tax rates but how high or low the marginal rate of taxation should be and how they should vary with income is a complex issue and opinions vary social security schemes that withdraw benefits represent an extremely high effective marginal tax rate other schemes call for relatively low marginal tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution which tax transfer schedule does most to reduce poverty the issue is one of optimal nonlinear income taxation the authors show that one of the key theoretical results of the welfarist literature is overturned if it is desirable for everybody to work the optimal marginal tax rate on the very poorest individuals is strictly negative they argue that the nonwelfarist perspective points toward lower marginal tax rates in the lower part of the income distribution than does the welfarist perspective but numerical simulations suggest that the effect is of limited quantitative significance using conventional functional forms and parameter values optimal marginal tax rates on the poor are in the 60 70 percent range

benefits and the labour supply of women married to unemployed men this paper seeks to explain the low labor force participation rates of women married to unemployed men in the reducing the net increment to household income that would result from the wife s employment simple probit models of the participation and part time full time decisions are estimated using a large cross sectional data set the results confirm the importance of severe disincentive effects controlling for labor market conditions income related benefits are found to create worse problems than national insurance benefits both types impede part time work in particular copyright 1990 by royal economic society

modelling labour decisions of french agricultural households a joint model of labour decisions for farm couples is presented attention is given to operator and spouse participation decisions in the off farm labour market as well as the decision to use hired farm labour farm household labour choices which include both on farm and off farm work decisions and hired labour decisions are thus modelled as a household joint process the model is applied to a sample of french farm households empirical results illustrate the importance of spouse decisions on off farm labour participation and supply function structure they also show that operator labour and hired farm labour are complementary but wife labour and hired farm labour are substitutable

why do firms engage in environmental management an empirical study in china abstract there are increasing pressures being put on firms from a number of different sources such as governmental regulation community participation and market demand to engage firms in environmental initiatives these factors play different roles at various development periods government regulation was the major pressure initially however community participation and market demand have become more and more important thus a better understanding of the determinant factors that play a role in engaging firms to take environmental management initiatives may help policy makers develop more effective environmental policies using data collected from 89 firms in wujin county of jiangsu province china this paper developed an index system to evaluate the corporate environmental management performance furthermore we used econometric methodology to identify the main factors that probably shape corporate environmental management performance including both external pressures and firm characteristics the results showed that pressures from supply chain customers and communities played positive roles in engaging firms to improve environmental management performance however the pressure from the regulatory system did not implicate positive effect on environmental management performance when basic compliance is not an issue in the region anymore the results also showed that firms with larger scale will be more active in engaging in environmental management initiatives finally our results suggest that a regulation s stimulation may be reduced as long as firms have complied with requirements of local environmental standards and other environmental laws b policy makers should pay more attention to market and information instruments c more financial and technical support should be provided to encourage small and medium sized enterprises smes to improve environmental performance

the enforcement of pollution control laws inspections violations and self reporting targeting is the practice of inspecting firms most likely to violate a regulation this paper provides empirical evidence on the role of targeting in regulatory compliance i propose that self reporting by a firm is used to demonstrate that firms are willing to cooperate the results indicate that there is a one quarter penalty period following a violation inspections are also determined by the economic situation of the surrounding community demonstrating that targeting opens the door to interest group influence inspections that detect violations encourage self reporting showing that firms demonstrate their desire to cooperate with regulators by disclosing violations

a model of female labour supply in which supply is dependent upon the chances of finding a job in this paper we extend a model of female labour supply by considering the impact of the local labour market thus in our model a woman supplies her labour if she has both made the decision to participate and found a job this extension is of particular importance in times of high unemployment when discouraged worker effects will be at their strongest we also consider the contribution of such a model to the debate concerning the labour supply of women married to men who are unemployed

how to make the fine fit the corporate crime an analysis of static and dynamic optimal punishment theories abstract this paper investigates dynamic optimal punishment theory previous studies of optimal punishment theory have all been confined to a static setup the most celebrated result in the literature is becker s 1968 optimal punishment theory which states that the optimal fine should be a multiple of the social cost of the crime i show that this result is no longer valid in a dynamic environment the implications of the dynamic model of optimal punishment are found to be strikingly different from those of the static model

voluntary pollution reductions and the enforcement of environmental law an empirical study of the 33 50 program abstract this paper studies determinants and effects of firms participation in the 33 50 program which is a voluntary pollution reduction vpr program initiated by government regulators we examine a wide range of explanations for voluntary corporate environmentalism and find evidence in support of an enforcement theory that predicts that 1 vpr participation is rewarded by relaxed regulatory scrutiny 2 the anticipation of this reward spurs firms to participate in the program and 3 the program rewards regulators with reduced pollution we also find that 33 50 participation was more likely for firms operating in states with larger environmentalist constituencies

public disclosure programs vs traditional approaches for environmental regulation green goodwill and the policies of the firm abstract a public disclosure program pdp is compared to a traditional environmental regulation exemplified by a tax subsidy in a simple dynamic framework a pdp aims at revealing the environmental record of firms to the public this information affects its image goodwill or brand equity and ultimately its profit a firm polluting less than its prescribed target would win consumer s sympathy and raise its goodwill whereas it is the other way around when the firm exceeds its emissions quota the evolution of this goodwill is assumed to depend also on green activities or advertising expenditures within this framework we analyze how a pdp affects the firm s optimal policies regarding emissions pricing and advertising as compared to a traditional regulation we show that advertising acts as a complementary device to pricing and that emissions are increasing in goodwill the role of a standard or target level for emissions turns out to be totally different under both policy regimes in the case of a tax subsidy approach this target level only acts as constant who increases or decreases profit by a fixed amount but it does not affect the policy of the firm on the contrary if a pdp is implemented the target value for emissions enters in an important way in the goodwill accumulation mechanism and determines how the firm reacts to the regulation and what is the time path for the economic and environmental variables moreover this value is also crucial to determine the possibility that a pdp is profit improving a policy implication of this fact is that regulators should be particularly careful in fixing the emission standard when a pdp is applied the theoretical results are complemented with a numerical illustration

international charity under asymmetric information abstract international charity is often subject to moral hazard and adverse selection problems we show that the burden of informational asymmetries are borne by the most needy countries even when charities design incentive contracts which limit the rents that some countries can extract

cutting environmental penalties to protect the environment abstract when pollutants are persistent and the polluter has private information regarding the occurrence of accidental releases and the cost of clean up we show that the penalty regime which most effectively protects the environment will involve penalties which are less than maximal the extent to which these penalties will be less than maximal is interestingly a non monotonic function of the persistence of the hazardous substance being handled with the highest penalties being appropriate in the case of pollutants of medium persistence our analysis complement consisting work which predicts that setting the penalties faced by some classes of violator below their maximal level may be compliance enhancing see for example harrington journal of public economics 1988 37 29 53 greenberg journal of economic theory 1984 32 1 13 kambhu journal of regulatory economics 1989 1 103 114

investigating external and internal pressures on corporate environmental behavior in papermaking enterprises of china abstract as china s ecological environmental problem becomes severe corporate environmental behavior ceb has become the focus of a range of stakeholders policy makers and the whole society since the operating activities of companies is the main source of environmental pollution this study used a questionnaire survey and structural equation model sem to examine the relative importance of external and internal pressures eip on driving ceb data was obtained from 702 papermaking companies in china the mechanism of eip effects on ceb was tested employing sem through path analysis using amos 21 0 the results showed that government pressure economic pressure and internal pressure played significant positive roles in environmental behavior of papermaking companies in china economic pressure was the most important factor on environmental behaviors including defensive accommodative and proactive behaviors of papermaking companies furthermore the role of internal pressure on ceb defensive and proactive was second only to economic pressure while the role of government pressure on ceb was much weaker than our expectation however the role of social pressure which was imposed by general public and environmental non governmental organizations ngos was not significant thus policy makers should emphasize on the interactions of economic mechanism government regulation and internal incentive mechanism to stimulate firms to adopt active environmental behavior more concerns from the general public shall be addressed to enhance their driving effect on ceb in chinese papermaking industry

disability in italian households income poverty and labour market participation this article studies the economic effects of disabled members on italian households with the aim of identifying a suitable target group for welfare policies survey of households income and wealth data for the year 2000 is used preliminary results show significant differences in levels of income and poverty diffusion to the detriment of households with disabled members we propose an exogenous explanation the replacement ratio between disability benefits and expected labour income shows that disability benefits do not compensate the potential incomes of the disabled person and of the possible carer except in households with severe socioeconomic disadvantages we also propose an endogenous explanation applying a logit model we show that the labour market participation of the possible carer is reduced in households with disabled persons in order to increase the income of the households with disabled members policy recommendations include the provision of care services and structural policies to impro

adaptation towards reference values a non linear perspective using large scale panel data we examine the dynamics of adjustment towards reference points for key workplace attributes we discover that an exponential smooth transition autoregressive estar model is superior to a linear model in characterizing such a process the speed of adjustment increases non linearly with the distance from reference points and adjustment is faster for job satisfaction shocks compared to shocks in earnings or work hours our findings lend further credence to the relative utility hypothesis and highlight the inherently non linear nature of the dynamic path of adjustment towards reference points a previously neglected issue in the adaptation literature