Sandra Rousseau publications

By pure coincidence I was checking through some NEP: Environmental Economics and came across a couple of interesting papers by Sandra Rousseau (KULEUVEN).

It also so happens that she is also the author of the Environmental Economics journal ranking that we commented on in the previous post. This is worth reading in full.

Sandra Rousseau recent publications

Papers that I need read:

Journal Evaluation by Environmental and Resource Economists: A Survey

Date: 2007-11
By: Rousseau Sandra (K.U.Leuven-Center for Economic Studies)

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ete:etewps:ete0705&r=env

Using an online survey, we have asked the researchers in the field of environmental and resource economics how they themselves would rank a representative list of journals in their field. The results of this ranking are then compared to the ordering based on the journals’ impact factors as published by Thomson Scientific. The two sets of rankings seem to be positively correlated, but statistically the null hypothesis that the two rankings are uncorrelated cannot be rejected. This observation suggests that researchers interpret the current quality of journals based on other factors in addition to the impact factors.

The Impact of Sanctions and Inspections on Firms’ Environmental Compliance Decisions

Firms’ compliance decisions are expected to be strongly influenced by the expected fine for non-compliance with environmental regulations. In this paper we measure the effect of the probability of inspection and the size of the fine – jointly and separately – on the compliance decisions made by textile firms in Flanders. The results confirm the deterrence effect of increasing inspections, but they do not support a similar finding for monetary sanctions. The low levels of the sanctions that courts levy and the rapidly increasing marginal abatement costs imply that firms’ compliance decisions are not positively affected by the imposed penalties. However, we do find that it might be welfare enhancing to occasionally scan a selection of firms or sectors more deeply since the number of detected violations raises significantly as a consequence.


Economic Empirical Analysis of Sanctions for Environmental Violations: a Literature Overview

In order to have an effective and efficient environmental policy, it is necessary to
complement the legislative texts with a monitoring and enforcement strategy. Without
such a strategy, the regulation’s target group will have little or no incentive to comply with the rules and the environmental objectives are not likely to be met. Over recent years an extensive theoretical literature on the monitoring and enforcement aspects of environmental regulations has emerged (see Cohen (2000b) and Polinsky and Shavell (2000) for literature overviews). However, the volume of empirical studies has been lagging behind and still not much is known about the use and the impact of various instruments used by environmental agencies.

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