Effluent limits are frequently based on a uniform emission standard, which applies to all polluting facilities within a single industry. However, the implementation of many environmental protection laws does not lead to uniform effluent limits due to considerations of local environmental...

Despite the well-known static cost-inefficiency of uniform emission standards to control pollution, governments continue to use them in a variety of settings. In this paper, we show that inspection agencies can sometimes use their informational advantage to design monitoring strategies that...

Over time, inspection agencies gather information about firms that cause harmful externalities. This information may allow agencies to differentiate their monitoring strategies in the future, since inspections can be influenced by firms’ past performance relative to other competitors in the...