Thomas Blondiau, Empirical analysis of environmental regulation enforcement

• Promoter: Prof. Dr. Stef Proost
• Co-promoter: Prof. Dr. Sandra Rousseau

In my PhD, I analyze the enforcement process of environmental policy. More specifically, I analyze which objectives the specific actors involved in this process pursue (such as judges, prosecutors) and how economic considerations (such as cost-benefit analysis, existence of opportunity costs) affect the decisions that they make. Furthermore, I also analyze how institutions affect this process by looking at how broadening administrative enforcement competences affects deterrence against committing environmental offenses. Finally, I also analyze the moral element by investigating normatively how intentional violations should be treated differently from accidental offenses. In terms of methodology, I use a combination of economic modeling and empirical analysis. Some of the specific methodologies I use are related to welfare economics, game theory, discrete choice methods and policy evaluation methods. In terms of scope of the analysis, the empirical analyses are case studies of the environmental enforcement process in Belgium. However, we believe that these results may have broader relevance since enforcement processes in many European countries bear quite some similarities. Moreover, some of the results may not be restricted to enforcement of environmental policy, since many similarities again occur with enforcement process in different policy areas.