Does Voluntary Regulation Provide Regulatory Relief? A Lesson from the Responsible Care Program

Huan Li () and Neha Khanna

No 235652, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: We explore the relationship between voluntary and mandatory regulation to assess whether there is any evidence of regulatory relief. Specifically, we investigate whether firm participation in the Responsible Care (RC) program reduces pressure from OSHA inspections. We use two indicators of regulatory relief: (1) the overall probability of an OSHA inspection regardless of its type, and (2) the probability of a planned inspection relative to other inspection types conditional on being selected into an OSHA inspection. We apply a control function model to address the endogeneity of RC participation that is due to a potential reverse causality between participating in RC and being inspected by OSHA. Our results show that participating in RC did not lower the overall probability of an inspection, however, RC participants experienced fewer planned inspections than non-RC participants. We conclude that there is regulatory relief from OSHA inspections due to participating in RC but not enough to overwhelm the probability of an OSHA inspection due to other, unplanned triggers.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Health Economics and Policy; Industrial Organization; Political Economy; Public Economics; Research Methods/Statistical Methods; Resource/Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea16:235652

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235652

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