本文探討環境政策之制度性變化與地方環保管制崛起之關係。文獻中有些作者(如Williams III (2012)) 認為美國在過去數十年間地方管制逐漸變為強勢, 甚至凌駕在中央聯邦管制規定之上的原因是由於環保政策在過去由傳統的排放從量管制轉為汙染稅之類的從價管制之故。我們設立了各種同時行動和循序行動的賽局, 並發現在六種同時/循序和從量/從價的組合中, 中央政府幾乎都是唯一的政策設定者。只有在地方政府領頭的從價政策競爭中, 地方政府才有可能超越中央而成為活躍的政策設定者。因此環境政策規範之改變並無法做為解釋地方管制勢力崛起的主要決定性因素。

Throughout US environmental regulation history, centralized regulation by the federal EPA has been the norm. More recently, however, state/local governments have taken a more active role by imposing more stringent environmental standards than the federal requirements. Some authors in the literature claim that this may be caused by the policy regime shift from the early command-and-control to incentive-based regulations. In this paper, we adopt both simultaneous-move and sequential-move regulation models, and consider both quantity and price policy regimes to see if and when this argument is valid. It is found that the policy regime shift theory holds only in a rather restricted sequential-move setting in which local EPAs lead the game. In addition, we further incorporate policy implementation/enforcement costs in our analysis. It is found that equilibrium policies of the central and local EPAs hinge crucially on these costs.