Informational Regulation of Environmental Risks

This paper examines the law and economics of informational regulation (IR) of environmental risks. Informational regulation here means regulation which provides to affected stakeholders information on the operations of regulated entities, usually with the expectation that such stakeholders will then exert pressure on these entities to comply with regulations in a manner which serves the interests of stakeholders. As such, IR reinforces and augments direct regulatory monitoring and enforcement through third-party monitoring and incentives. The paper provides two contrasting frameworks, from law and economics, to analyze the costs and benefits likely to arise from IR and concludes with a discussion of the appropriate scope of IR as a substitute for and complement of traditional environmental regulation and law.

[1]  Eric W. Orts.  Positive Law and Systemic Legitimacy: A Comment on Hart and Habermas* , 1993 .

[2]  E. Maskin,et al.  On Imperfect Information and Optimal Pollution Control , 1980 .

[3]  L. Kaplow.  Rules versus Standards: An Economic Analysis , 1992 .

[4]  G. Hardin,et al.  The Tragedy of the Commons , 1968, Green Planet Blues.

[5]  Steven Shavell,et al.  A MODEL OF THE OPTIMAL USE OF LIABILITY AND SAFETY REGULATION , 1984 .

[6]  G. Stigler.  The Theory of Economic Regulation , 2021, The Political Economy.

[7]  P Slovic,et al.  Informing and educating the public about risk. , 1986, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[8]  E. Meidinger,et al.  Privatizing Regulatory Enforcement: A Preliminary Assessment of Citizen Suits Under Federal Environmental Laws , 1985 .

[9]  Robert B. June.  The Structure of Standing Requirements for Citizen Suits and the Scope of Congressional Power , 1994 .

[10]  The Modern Business Organization: Bargaining under Constraints , 1982 .

[11]  Robert N. Stavins,et al.  Incentive-Based Environmental Regulation: A New Era from an Old Idea , 1990 .

[12]  G. Becker,et al.  A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence , 1983 .

[13]  Carol M. Rose.  Rethinking Environmental Controls: Management Strategies for Common Resources , 1991 .

[14]  Mary L. Lyndon.  Information Economics and Chemical Toxicity: Designing Laws to Produce and Use Data , 1989 .

[15]  O. Williamson.  Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractual Relations , 1979, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[16]  J. Kambhu.  Regulatory standards, noncompliance and enforcement , 1989 .

[17]  C. Sunstein.  What's Standing after Lujan? Of Citizen Suits, 'Injuries,' and Article III , 1992 .

[18]  Hurvey Leibenstein.  Allocative efficiency vs. X-Efficiency , 1966 .