Determinants of facility level environmental inspections

Pitois, Gauthier

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Description

Title

Determinants of facility level environmental inspections

Author(s)

Pitois, Gauthier

Issue Date

2013-02-03T19:36:51Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Brozović, Nicholas

Department of Study

Agricultural and Consumer Economics

Discipline

Agricultural and Applied Economics

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• environmental inspections
• water quality
• enforcement
• targeting strategies
• Clean Water Act
• memoryless inspections
• jurisdictions
• inspection types

Abstract

As environmental regulatory agencies have limited resources to enforce compliance, they tend to optimize the efficiency of resource allocation by employing targeting strategies. This thesis investigates the scheduling of Clean Water Act inspections in Illinois and the extent to which these inspections are memoryless. Using facility level and local EPA agency level data, we test inspection strategies for common decision factors, such as environmental performance, and compare them across the different jurisdictions in Illinois. Our analysis has several key results. First, at the facility level, a majority of inspections are memoryless, though they are targeted according to local jurisdiction parameters. Second, although some facilities are targeted for more frequent non-memoryless inspections, none of our environmental performance parameters seem to influence this sorting. Finally, different inspection types are implemented in different ways, suggesting that they serve distinct purposes in the regulatory process.

Graduation Semester

2012-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42378

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2012 Gauthier Pitois

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