Corruption in environmental policy: the case of waste

This paper investigates interactions between waste and enforcement policies in the presence of a corruptible bureaucrat. We set up a repeated game obtained by an infinite repetition of a three stage game, where a firm producing illegal waste can bribe a bureaucrat in charge of monitoring its disposal choices. The bureaucrat may accept or not the bribe and chooses whether to hide illegal waste disposal to a national waste authority. We study conditions under which corruption can arise in equilibrium, and find that illegal disposal is larger under corruption, while, surprisingly, the bribe does not necessarily decrease with the punishment for detected corruption. Finally, our analysis suggests that increasing the interactions between the regulated firm and the bureaucrat increases illegal disposal via corruption.