Regulating Industrial Pollution: Experimental Evidence from India

智力价值：环境法规能减少发展中国家的污染吗？这个问题的答案事关重大。印度、中国和其他发展中国家的污染浓度超过了发达国家的最高浓度。此外，有令人信服的证据表明，污染导致人过早死亡，并以其他方式损害健康(Ransom和Pope，1995；Chay和Greenstone，2003；Almond等人)。2010)。然而，由于监管机构资金不足和腐败，人们对复杂的环境法能否在许多发展中国家成功执行表示极大的怀疑。该项目将提供严格的证据，证明在政治上可行的监管改革如何能够减少印度的污染，印度是一个重要的发展中国家。这项研究使用了一项独特的大规模随机实验，该实验在印度增长最快、污染最严重的工业邦之一进行，以评估两种常见工具--州监管机构的检查和私人第三方环境审计--在减少工厂层面污染方面的改进效果。这些改进是设计的，目前正在与环境监管机构联合进行评估。这项研究的背景以及与监管机构的直接合作关系确保了高度的外部有效性，并有能力将成功的项目调查结果推广到印度其他邦。监管对污染水平的因果影响估计将是关于这些问题的第一个实验证据，这些问题在美国得到了广泛的研究(例如，Chay和Greenstone 2005；Greenstone 2004)，但在快速工业化的国家中研究得更少。我们还将估计提高工厂环境合规性的成本，以及工厂层面的监管是否会产生溢出效应。该项目还将研究监管过程的政治经济学。PI将研究如何提高审计师从被审计的工业工厂中独立出来如何改变审计信息的准确性。监管机构档案中的行政数据将有助于确定违规行为何时以及为什么会导致制裁。这将揭示发展中国家对污染执法的限制。更广泛的影响：该项目将对发展中国家的环境法规设计产生更广泛的影响。这一结果将直接关系到古吉拉特邦和印度其他邦的最佳监管结构，从而间接影响到超过10亿印度公民的空气和水质量。各国环境政策制定者已经表示有兴趣利用该项目的发现，并通过主办一次会议，让州监管机构分享对环境监管的想法，从而开始了传播过程。该项目的影响也适用于其他背景，如卫生和金融，在这些领域，第三方审计是该研究项目与指导美国S研究生和硕士学生相关的监管体系的一部分。它还将通过加强美国的私人投资机构、印度研究人员和当地项目合作伙伴之间的关系，改善印度的研究和教育基础设施，这些合作伙伴包括在印度环境部门工作的政府和非政府机构。该项目的实施本身将扩大环境信息的可获得性，结果和新产生的数据集将向学术界和大众广泛传播。

Intellectual Merit:Can environmental regulations reduce pollution in developing countries? The stakes for the answer to this question are high. Pollution concentrations in India, China, and other developing countries are at levels that exceed the highest concentrations recorded in developed countries. Further, there is compelling evidence that pollution kills people prematurely and otherwise harms health (Ransom and Pope 1995; Chay and Greenstone 2003; Almond et al. 2010). Yet, there is great skepticism that complex environmental laws can be successfully enforced in many developing countries due to poor funding for regulators and corruption. This project will produce rigorous evidence on how politically-feasible changes in regulation can reduce pollution in India, an important developing-world context. The study uses a unique, large-scale randomized experiment conducted in one of India's fastest-growing and most polluted industrial states to evaluate the efficacy of improvements in two common instruments - inspections by state regulators and private third-party environmental audits - at reducing plant-level pollution. These improvements were designed and the evaluation is being conducted jointly with the environmental regulator. The context of the study and direct partnership with the regulator ensure high external validity and the ability to scale successful project findings to other Indian states. The estimated causal effects of regulation on pollution levels will be the first experimental evidence on these questions, which have been studied extensively in the United States (e.g., Chay and Greenstone 2005; Greenstone 2004), and much less in rapidly industrializing countries. We will also estimate the costs of increased environmental compliance for plants and whether plant-level regulation generates spillover effects. The project will also study the political economy of the regulatory process. The PI's will examine how increasing the independence of auditors from audited industrial plants changes the accuracy of audit information. Administrative data from the files of the regulator will help identify when and why violations lead to sanctions. This will shed light on the limits to pollution enforcement in a developing-country context.Broader Impacts:The project will have broader impacts on the design of environmental regulation in the developing world. The results will have a direct bearing on the best regulatory structure for Gujarat and other Indian states and therefore an indirect bearing on the air and water quality of over a billion Indian citizens. National environmental policymakers have already expressed interest in using the project's findings and have begun the dissemination process by hosting a conference for state regulators to share ideas on environmental regulation. The project's impact is also applicable to other contexts, such as health and finance, where hird-party audits are part of the regulatory system The research project is associated with mentoring of graduate and master?s students in the United States. It will also improve infrastructure for research and education in India, by strengthening relationships between the U.S.-based PIs, Indian researchers and local project partners, including governmental and non-governmental bodies, working in the environmental sector in India. The implementation of the project itself will expand the availability of environmental information, and the results and newly-generated dataset will be disseminated broadly, to both academic and popular audiences.