Governments often require that extractive industry firms post environmental bonds as financial assurance to cover eventual reclamation liabilities. Such bond requirements frequently do not fully cover the reclamation cost. We show that a revenue-maximizing government may reasonably require a bond amount smaller than the full reclamation cost. This is because large bonds may discourage the extractive activities, diminishing fiscal income from project rents that could more than offset the decreased reclamation liability falling on the government. The selected bonding rate largely depends on the regulator's estimation of the elasticity of exit in response to bonding. Western Australia's recent refund of mining reclamation bonds to strong balance sheet firms, the US Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) historical concern over exit of oil and gas operators on onshore federal lands in response to bonding requirements and willingness to accept for its own account reclamation risks associated with incomplete bonding, and Texas's requirement for full-cost onshore oil and gas reclamation bonding are shown to all be consistent with this calculus.

政府通常要求采掘业公司将环境债券作为财务担保，以支付最终的填海债务。此类保证金要求经常不能完全覆盖开垦成本。我们表明，收入最大化的政府可能会合理地要求债券金额小于全部填海成本。这是因为大型债券可能会阻碍采掘活动，从而减少项目租金的财政收入，而这足以抵消政府减少的开垦负债。所选的粘合率在很大程度上取决于调节器对粘合后出口弹性的估计。西澳大利亚州最近将采矿复垦债券退还给了实力雄厚的资产负债表公司，美国土地管理局