Remediation and self-reporting in optimal law enforcement

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Innes, R
• 署名单位: University of Arizona
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(98)00101-7
• 发表日期: 1999
• 页码: 379-393
• 关键词: law enforcement; self-reporting; remediation

摘要

Many environmental laws encourage firms to self-report their violations to government regulators, rather than subject themselves to probabilistic enforcement. This paper studies self-reporting enforcement regimes when there are ex-post benefits of remediation or clean-up. Remediation benefits are shown to impart two advantages to the use of self-reporting beyond those identified elsewhere. Firstly, whereas non-reporting firms only engage in costly clean-up when they are caught by an enforcement authority, self-reporting firms always engage in efficient remediation. Secondly, with self-reporting, the government can costlessly impose stiffer non-reporter penalties that reduce the government enforcement effort required to achieve a given level of violation deterrence. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.