Determinants of facility level environmental inspections

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural and Applied Economics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Pitois, Gauthier

Contributors dc:contributor

• Brozović, Nicholas

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

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2012 Gauthier Pitois

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

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

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/42378