مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد در مورد مکانیزم های حسابرسی بهینه برای مالیات های محیطی – الزویر 2017

We consider the auditing problem of an environmental enforcement agency with Öxed audit resources: How to decide which Örms to audit after having observed the Örmsí taxable emissions reports. The goal of the agency is to implement the socially e¢ cient emissions level. The audit mechanism is the agencyís sole choice variable, while other variables such as the tax rate on emissions and the Öne for non-compliance are determined by other governmental actors. The Önes and budget of the agency are constrained in such a way that the common random audit mechanism fails to implement socially e¢ cient emissions. Assuming perfect information among the Örms, we derive an optimal audit mechanism capable of implementing the socially e¢ cient emissions level. The optimal audit mechanism creates a contest exploiting the strategic interdependencies between the Örms, where the probability of winning (not being audited) for each Örm depends on costly e§orts (their taxable emissions reports).

Introduction

Economists have frequently proposed unit taxes for industries with externalities, where the tax on emissions equalizes marginal damages and marginal benefits of emissions.1 Environmental Protection Agencies (EPAs) are typically in charge of enforcing these taxes. The EPAs usually cannot observe emissions directly, and therefore firms are required to self-report their emissions to the EPAs and the EPAs audit as many firms as their budget allows.2 The economic downturn in the past several years has led to severe cuts in the budgets of many EPAs. For instance, the operating budget of the US Environmental Protection Agency was reduced by 21% from 2010 to 2016.3 At the same time, the production processes of regulated firms have become increasingly complex resulting in higher auditing costs for these firms. Smaller budgets for EPAs and the rising costs of auditing have amplified the need to identify costeffective audit mechanisms. Audit mechanisms are strategies applied by the EPA in order to reach its objective of lowering the firms’ emissions to the socially efficient level (i.e. where firms’ marginal benefits from emissions are equal to the tax rate) by assigning to every firm a particular audit probability. This paper contributes towards the goal of designing an audit mechanism for the EPA that meets that objective while also taking into consideration the EPA’s limited audit resources. In this paper we use a stylized model to design step by step an audit mechanism for EPAs with limited resources that implements the socially efficient emissions level. We consider the EPA to be the designer of the audit mechanism, which can be constructed to make the regulated firms behave in a way the EPA desires. Under the derived optimal audit mechanism, the probability of auditing depends on the relative difference between a firm’s emissions report and a reference value for reported emissions (a high emissions level close to the unregulated emissions level) relative to other firms. When a firm increases its emissions report then the firm’s assigned audit probability decreases and the audit probabilities of all other firms increase. In essence, the optimal audit mechanism is a contest exploiting the strategic interdependencies between the firms. In this contest, firms compete for a prize (not being audited) by expending costly resources (their taxable emission reports).4 Higher reported emissions by one firm, relative to the other firms, results in a lower audit probability for that firm and higher audit probabilities for the other firms.