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This article analyzes whether, and if so, why, national inspectorates adopt different enforcement strategies when controlling the provision of welfare services, such as health care, eldercare, and the compulsory school. The findings show that the Swedish Schools Inspectorate uses a predominantly strict strategy, while the Health and Social Care Inspectorate relies on a more situational strategy. To explain this variation in enforcement strategy, the article tests four hypotheses derived from the literature on regulatory enforcement. The findings suggest that the variation between the agencies is not primarily the result of differences in resources or the authority to issue punitive decisions, as suggested by previous research. Instead, we find support for the hypothesis that the definition of quality can explain variation in adopted strategies, and partial support for the hypothesis that differences in regulatory mission can account for a variation in the agencies' formal enforcement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we find that foreign firms cross‐listed in the US issue significantly more and better‐quality management earnings forecasts after their home countries sign the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding Concerning Consultation and Cooperation and the Exchange of Information (MMoU), a nonbinding arrangement established by the International Organization of Securities Commissions to enhance the cross‐border enforcement of securities laws. Specifically, we find that after the MMoU, relative to their domestic counterparts in the US, foreign firms cross‐listed in the US are not only more likely to issue management earnings forecasts but also issue them more frequently. They also tend to issue better‐quality earnings forecasts, as measured by lower surprise, higher precision, greater timeliness, more disaggregation, lower optimism and fewer errors. We find that the observed effects of the MMoU signing are stronger for cross‐listed firms from countries with weaker institutional environments, resulting in greater enforcement concerns after the MMoU, and for firms with less foreign institutional ownership before the MMoU. Collectively, our findings support the conjecture that after a US‐listed foreign firm's home country enters the MMoU, the firm has more incentives to engage in voluntary disclosure due to greater concerns about regulatory enforcement and increased information demand from investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how investors perceive audit quality when regulators adopt different enforcement styles to communicate audit inspection findings, and when the audit firm responds to the inspection findings. We employed a 2 × 3 between‐subjects experimental design, with regulatory enforcement style (critical or supportive) and audit firm response (defensive actions or remedial actions or control) as the independent variables. We find that investors perceive a relatively high level of audit quality when the audit firm chooses to take remedial actions, regardless of regulators' enforcement styles. In contrast, investors perceive a relatively low level of audit quality when the audit firm chooses to take defensive actions in response to regulators that impose a critical enforcement style. Additional analyses show that investors' perception of audit quality mediates the joint effects of regulatory enforcement styles and audit firm response on willingness to invest. Our findings suggest implications for the ways that regulators adopt different enforcement styles, which should be of interest to audit practitioners and regulators, as the findings show the potential consequences of different firm response strategies to inspection findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street‐level interpretation and enforcement are critical to defining the meaning of law. To understand street‐level regulatory decisions, prior studies have highlighted internal office conditions, neglecting the influence that peer offices can have. This study examines the role of horizontal inter‐office interaction among frontline offices and illustrates how and under what conditions it shapes the meaning of law. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data on Japan's Soil Contamination Countermeasures Act, this study reveals that inter‐office interaction occurs within fixed groups and comes to shape shared interpretations of law that regulators believe are legally valid. This implies that under legal ambiguity, inter‐office interactions develop institutionalized notions of appropriateness and reinforce the perception of legal consistency, which bolster the legitimacy of enforcement. Although peer office networks encourage convergence on the interpretation of law, because of their clustered structure, legal meanings develop differently across various groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has developed and implemented policies targeting individuals for regulatory non‐compliance in the post‐2008 crisis period. This article develops a tripartite framework that differentiates between individual–firm, regulator–individual, and regulator–firm interactions to capture the complexity of these enforcement proceedings. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders, administrative decisionmaking observations, and documentary analysis, it outlines the process of individualizing responsibility for non‐compliance and finds that this approach poses evidential and investigative challenges for the regulator as a result of individual and corporate responses. The evidence shows that individuals are more likely than firms to engage in an adversarial response to an investigation rather than to settle. At the same time, through an inverse process of "corporatization" of the enforcement proceedings, firms may employ resources and strategies aimed at obscuring individual responsibility or binding together more closely the corporate and the individual case. The article concludes that the prospects of a successful outcome in investigating individuals depend not only on regulators' activities but also on corporate responses and on which managers are considered assets to the firm and which may be thrown to the wolves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Noise exposure has long been an occupational health concern and has been an important area of focus of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since its founding. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what effects OSHA's noise standards have had on employer efforts to reduce risks. Consequently, a review of OSHA noise standard violations was performed to clarify the violation trends between 1972 and 2019. Methods: Using the OSHA Information System, researchers identified 119 305 violations involving four noise standards between 1972 and 2019: 29 CFR 1910.95, occupational noise exposure in general industry; 1926.52, occupational noise exposure in construction; 1926.101, hearing protection in construction, and 1904.10, recording criteria for cases involving occupational hearing loss. Violation frequencies of noise standard subparagraphs and relationships to factors such as industry differences were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t tests. Results: The most commonly violated noise standard was 1910.95 in manufacturing. Such violations rose between 1972 and 1985 and then declined steadily. Whether in general industry or construction, four noise standards were most‐frequently cited: lack of feasible administrative or engineering controls (1910.95[b] and 1926.52[d]) and inadequate hearing conservation program (1910.95[c] and 1926.52[b]). These violations were more highly penalized (mean = $1036.50) than other subparagraph violations (mean = $915.80). Programmed and unprogrammed inspections generated similar violation quantities except between 1980 and 1985, when programmed inspections exhibited a sharp spike in violations. Conclusion: The study identified trends in OSHA noise standard violations and possible explanations for those trends. The study findings can support development of more practical noise‐exposure protection policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory behavior and effectiveness in authoritarian settings are subject to alternative characterizations. By tracing enforcement processes through a variety of case studies, this article proposes and refines a new model, at least with respect to energy efficiency regulations in China: authoritarian but responsive. Local rulemaking and operationalization is authoritarian, with strong and coordinative bodies of regulation, strategic plans, and active involvement of local authorities. Local authorities, however, often find themselves facing a welter of laws imposed on companies that create competing priorities for these local officials who then must struggle to find pragmatic solutions. On numerous occasions, such satisficing behavior by local officials makes them responsive to the performance and demands of regulated firms. Embedded in the decentralized authoritarian context, the authoritarian but responsive approach is found to be a rational choice of local governments and different from previous conceptualizations. It helps local governments coordinate across a diverse array of regulatory issues. Drawing on environmental enforcement in China, the model provides consistent explanations for the seemingly changing and discretionary enforcement incidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is followed by a decline in firms’ suboptimal investments. On average, we find that the probability of under‐investment in capital expenditure declines for firms from 23 countries requiring mandatory adoption of IFRS relative to firms from countries that do not have such requirements; meanwhile the probability of over‐investment remains unchanged. However, this real effect becomes smaller when we control for concurrent changes to the enforcement of financial reporting along with the introduction of IFRS in some countries, suggesting that the switch in standards is only one of the drivers for the observed benefits. Moreover, we find that the reduction in suboptimal investments is driven by firms with high reporting incentives to provide transparent financial reports from countries where the existing legal and enforcement systems are strong. We further show that the real effect increases with the predicted changes in accounting comparability. Finally, we find that after mandatory IFRS adoption, capital investment becomes more value‐relevant, less sensitive to the availability of free cash flows, and more responsive to growth opportunities. Our findings provide new insights into the real effects of mandatory IFRS adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 are fatally flawed notwithstanding the apparent rigour of the process which produced them. These Regulations were the product of considerable deliberation following a sensitively executed public inquiry yet, it is argued, they rely too heavily on the rhetoric of criminal law while failing to take into account the competing norms for compliance and the impact of NHS budget constraints. Further, they push the CQC towards a heavy-handed deterrence approach to enforcement, which will increase hostility between regulatees and the inspectorate, and ultimately reduce the scope for developing the transparency about failures which is sorely needed in the NHS. This article challenges the contemporary wisdom that it is primarily knee-jerk regulatory responses that suffer from fatal flaws of this nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absence of a clear definition of environmental justice areas has been cited as one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's major deficiencies in managing federal environmental justice programs. Several states have explicitly defined potential environmental justice areas and integrated targeted efforts into the policy-making process. At the block-group level, this study evaluates the effects of New York State's environmental justice policy, which defines communities of concern in terms of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as mandates supplemental regulatory enforcement activities for these neighborhoods, on the agency's policy implementation practices under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. The empirical findings suggest that there is inconclusive evidence regarding race/ethnicity- and class-based environmental inequity. Also, the state's policy intervention is not universally effective. Moreover, task environments of a given community are a consistent determinant of the agency's regulatory compliance monitoring and assurance activities. This study then derives broader implications regarding the adoption of a policy instrument that defines and screens potential environmental justice communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how changes in governmental and social influences affect environmental enforcement in Guangzhou city, China, between 2000 and 2006. The paper finds that a form of 'decentered regulation' has developed. Regulatory enforcement is no longer the sole affair of the government and the regulatory bureaucracy, but has been increasingly influenced by societal forces. The transformation over time shows the promises and limits of decentered regulation in Guangzhou's dynamic authoritarian setting. Analyzing a set of longitudinal survey data and qualitative interviews, the paper finds that by 2006, the rise of civil society and its increased support for protecting the environment had a double-edged impact on the enforcement of environmental regulations. The paper demonstrates that on the one hand, by 2006, when government support for enforcement was low, societal forces developed an ability to counterbalance such lack of governmental support and positively influence enforcement. However, it also shows that when government support was high, a concurrent rise in societal support created a negative effect on enforcement. Thus too much societal support can become an enforcement burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the stability of relationships between state-level variables and regulatory enforcement across short periods of time. By comparing multilevel models, it is demonstrated that the effects of state-level variables on fines imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration differ between 1989-91 and 1992-94. In a second analysis, a model where variables are averaged over the six years from 1989 through 1994 is compared with a model in which they vary from year to year. The effects of state characteristics on fines differ between the averaged-year model and the varying-year model, which suggests that even minor temporal changes can alter relationships between state variables and enforcement. Based on these findings, it is recommended that researchers who are interested in the impact of state characteristics on regulation examine longer time frames or investigate variables that can explain this instability of relationships. Este artículo investiga la estabilidad en las relaciones entre variables a nivel estatal y el reforzamiento regulatorio a través de periodos cortos de tiempo. Al comparar modelos multinivel se demuestra que los efectos de las variables a nivel estatal en multas impuestas por la Administración de la Seguridad Ocupacional y de Salud (OSHA, por sus siglas en ingles) difieren entre los periodos 1989-91 y 1992-94. En un segundo análisis, un modelo en el que las variables son promediadas a lo largo de seis años de 1989 hasta 1994 es comparado con un modelo en el que varían de año a año. Los efectos de las características de los estados en la multas difieren entre el modelo de promedio anual y el modelo de datos variables anuales, lo que sugiere que aún cambios temporales menores pueden alterar las relaciones entre las variables estatales y su regulación. Basados en estos hallazgos, recomendamos a investigadores interesados en el impacto de las características de los estados sobre la regulación que examinen periodos de tiempo más largos o variables que puedan explicar esta inestabilidad en las relaciones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The federal government adopted several measures during the mid-1990s to address concerns about race-based and class-based disparities in environmental protection. This article examines whether these measures affected the pattern of state enforcement of three federal pollution control laws. Using differences-in-differences models to estimate the effects of the federal policy adoption, I find evidence of increases in state enforcement of the Clean Air Act in large African-American communities, but declines in enforcement in communities with large poor and Hispanic populations. Similarly, there is evidence that state enforcement of the Clean Water Act decreased in poor and African-American communities, but there were no real changes in enforcement of facilities regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Collectively, the analysis suggests that the federal policy had minimal positive effects on state regulatory enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory theory suggests that providing agencies with multiple sanctioning options allows them to dispose promptly of less serious matters and thereby conserve resources to pursue serious offenders. However, agencies dependent on third-party monitoring may have their enforcement agendas skewed toward more trivial violations. We consider these competing expectations by analyzing enforcement actions at the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) from 1999 to 2004 . The FEC – an agency heavily dependent on third-party monitoring – expanded its enforcement options in 2000 by creating two new programs to pursue low-level offenders, while leaving its monitoring strategy unchanged. We hypothesized that more sanctioning options would allow the FEC to allocate its resources more efficiently, and thus deal more effectively with the skew created by third-party monitoring. We found instead that although the FEC disposed more promptly of low-level infractions, it was no more effective at focusing on serious violations. Our results suggest that for many agencies, expanding enforcement options without addressing monitoring has limited ability to resolve enforcement problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers local authority strategies towards the regulation and prosecution of private landlords who commit the criminal offences of unlawful eviction and harassment. Generally, local authorities operate compliance-based strategies, rarely (if ever) resorting to prosecution. In seeking to explain this approach, the article draws upon the literature concerning regulatory crime, but also distinguishes local authority responses to landlord crime from regulatory crime as more typically conceived. Broadly, it is argued that, while there are clear parallels with other areas of regulatory activity, there is much that is different about landlord crime, particularly as a result of central government strategies towards the private rented sector, the legislative background to landlord crime, and the motivations behind local approaches to regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]