Monitoring and Enforcement and Environmental Compliance: Power Plant Emissions During the 2018–19 Federal Government Shutdown
利用2018-19年美国联邦政府停摆导致环保署员工休假这一自然实验，研究发现燃煤电厂在短期监管松懈时，通过减少末端污染控制增加了颗粒物排放，但二氧化硫和氮氧化物排放无显著变化。
We show that firms strategically reduce their compliance effort when monitoring and enforcement unexpectedly decline in the short run. We use the Environmental Protection Agency’s furlough during the 2018–19 federal government shutdown as a natural experiment to analyze the change in daily air emissions from coal-fired power plants in the United States over a 30-day period. Using an engineering-based approach we confirm that coal-fired power plants increased daily particulate matter emissions during the furlough of federal employees by temporarily reducing end-of-pipe pollution control. At the same time, consistent with our expectations, there is no detectable increase in daily emissions of SO2 and NOX during the furlough, because they are continuously monitored and the furlough did not represent a change in the stringency of monitoring and enforcement for these pollutants.