Although monitoring and enforcement problems are clearly a pitfall of environmental regulation, little empirical work has been done about the effect of current monitoring strategies on pollution emissions. Laplante and Rilstone supply an empirical framework for measuring the impact of environmental inspections on plant emissions. They apply it to pulp and paper plants in Quebec for which reliable data were available. The results suggest that both inspections and the threat of inspections reduce pollution emissions. They also show that a plant's decision whether to report its emissions levels to the regulator is not random.
Inspections improve the frequency of reporting.