Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Department of Economics
The University of Texas at Austin
“Environmental Citizen Complaints”
Abstract: Citizen complaints feature prominently in public oversight contexts. The nature and effects of complaints, however, are controversial and poorly understood. We first investigate attitudes about citizen complaints using a nationally representative survey. We document that the public believes complaints promote open, efficient, and equitable governance. We then exploit novel administrative data on over 130,000 complaints in Texas to investigate their observed dynamic effects on regulator behavior. Empirically, complaints are associated with sharp increases in regulator monitoring and enforcement. Complaints uncover more, and more severe violations, than more standard monitoring approaches. Overall, our findings are consistent with complaints enhancing regulatory efficiency.
Biography: Professor Mary Evans is a professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Department of Economics (by courtesy) at The University of Texas at Austin. Professor Evans has primary research and teaching interests in the field of environmental economics and policy. Her research also explores applied questions in health policy and child and family policy. Her research has been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Science, the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (JAERE), the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, among other journals. She received the 2016 Ralph C. d'Arge and Allen V. Kneese Award for Outstanding Publication in JAERE for her paper "The Clean Air Act Watch List: An Enforcement and Compliance Natural Experiment." She has received funding from the EPA, the Sloan Foundation, and the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation. Professor Evans is currently an editor of JAERE.
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