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Self-Reporting and Private Enforcement in Environmental Regulation

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Abstract

Self-reporting of compliance status has become a common feature in the enforcement of environmental regulation. In this paper, I generalize existing models of enforcement with self-reporting to include the possibility of private enforcement of regulation through citizen suits. This allows me to identify an additional argument for the efficiency of self-reporting: it can increase the likelihood of a successful suit and thus facilitate private enforcement of regulation. Specifically, if self-reporting sufficiently increases the expected penalty for losing a citizen suit, if the costs of private enforcement are low, and if inspection costs are high enough relative to enforcement costs, self-reporting lowers expected regulatory and social costs by allowing the regulator to rely on private enforcement and decrease his enforcement efforts.

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Abbreviations

EPA:

Environmental Protection Agency

SR:

Self-reporting

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oregon State University, Ballard Hall 240 E, Corvallis, OR, 97331, USA

    Christian Langpap

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  1. Christian Langpap
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Correspondence to Christian Langpap.

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Langpap, C. Self-Reporting and Private Enforcement in Environmental Regulation. Environ Resource Econ 40, 489–506 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-007-9166-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-007-9166-8

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