Analyses of Clean Water Act Violations by Major-Discharging Firms in Four Industries

• In Event: Posters I

Abstract

Acts of corporate lawbreaking can generate tremendous economic harms and, particularly in the environmental realm, negative effects on life and health. Yet despite ample discussion and debate, the origins of such offending and the effects of various regulatory approaches have been subject to relatively little empirical investigation and remain poorly understood. The current study increases understanding of corporate offending by expanding upon existing analyses of a painstakingly compiled, and richly detailed, but little employed dataset on one area of corporate environmental offending—Clean Water Act violations by publicly traded firms in the paper, pulp, steel, and oil industries. The analyses use discharge monitoring reports, which are effectively self-report data, to avoid issues related to the use of official inspection or enforcement data.

Author

• Justin Pascal Bernstein, University of Maryland, College Park