We compare experimentally a traditional random inspection policy and a variant where the agency may carry out a preliminary inspection of the level of ambient pollution before implementing any individual inspection. Since the agency may have an incentive to announce high inspection probabilities...

We consider an inspection game between "n" polluting firms and an environmental enforcement agency. If the cost of monitoring ambient pollution is low enough, the optimal inspection policy consists in imposing the maximal possible fine, and mixing between observing ambient pollution and not...

We consider a special case of Schmutzler's and Goulder''s (1997) analysis of output taxes vs emission taxes as environmental policy instruments. We identify new necessary conditions for the existence of an optimum. We also show that, in this case, it is always optimal to have a mixed tax with...

This work extends Lazear and Rosen's seminal paper to evaluate the performance of rank order tournaments when agents perform multiple tasks and the principal chooses, together with the prize spread, the weights assigned to each task in determining aggregate performance of each agent. All...

This paper presents a multitask principal-agent model to examine how environmental liability rules for individual managers within a corporate hierarchy affect, on the one hand, the incentive schemes the organization provides and, on the other hand, the choice between a functional or a...