Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics cordially invites you to join the brown bag seminar `Cash vs in-kind punishment: Evidence from environmental enforcement cases´ with Pamela Campa and co-author Lucija Muehlenbachs.

Interested in joining the seminar? Please contact site@hhs.se - the Zoom link will be sent to you by email with further instructions!

Abstract 

Cash penalties in court cases are sometimes reduced when a defendant agrees to undertake an in-kind project, for example, by agreeing to create an education program or a public park. In the United States, court cases involving environmental violations are encouraged to use in-kind settlements as a way to address Environmental Justice concerns for minority and low-income populations. We find in-kind settlements are viewed favorably by the public, based on evidence from both a randomized survey as well as the U.S. stock market.Despite regulatory efforts to target in-kind settlements to Environmental Justice communities, we find a large share going to communities least vulnerable to Environmental Justice concerns. Taking future environmental violations into account, we construct a dynamic discrete choice model to estimate the social welfare weights that would reconcile the historical allocation of in-kind settlements. Our model predicts that changes in the location of in-kind settlements could have large impacts on welfare.