Making things stick: enforcement and compliance

Environmental rules and regulations are only useful insofar as firms can be persuaded to comply with them in full or in part. We survey the rapidly growing literature on the enforcement aspects of environmental policy. The difficulties facing any regulatory agency are likely to be exacerbated by information problems, penalty constraints, and the evasion efforts of firms, and we emphasize the role that recent innovative approaches to implementation can play in bolstering more traditional enforcement instruments.