Managing pollution control in Brazil : the potential use of taxes and fines by federal and state governments

Abstract

The authors make a case for federal monitoring of state environmental agencies'(SEPAs') performance because of the tradeoff for the states between the need to raise revenue from taxes on local output and the need to limit pollution. They also show that fines and taxes assigned respectively to the federal and state governments can improve firms'compliance and SEPA's performance, and hence environmental quality, without damaging state revenue, and perhaps even improving it. For their analysis, the authors rely on numerical policy simulations based on an analytical framework designed as a multilevel Stackelberg game. This framework reproduces the hierarchical structure of pollution control policies in Brazil, where the federal environmental protection agency relies on SEPAs to ensure that federally defined minimum ambient standards are met locally. The numerical simulations are based on a case study of the food, and the printing and publishing industries.Urban Services to the Poor,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water and Industry,Pollution Management&Control,Health Monitoring&Evaluation