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For decades there has been a trend in regulatory studies to advocate a responsive, tit‐for‐tat, regulatory strategy. However, most of the prominent arguments for this strategy are theoretical and few have tested its effectiveness. Even less tested has been whether or not regulatory inspectors manage to react responsively to the "conduct" of regulatees. By distinguishing between five different kinds of responsiveness, the present article tests these different kinds of responsiveness in four different regulatory areas, using data about more than 2,500 legal breaches. The empirical analyses show that regulatory inspectors manage to act responsively, but only to a small degree and not necessarily in the way that the theories of responsive and tit‐for‐tat regulation recommend. Furthermore, the analyses show large differences between the four regulatory areas suggesting that future studies should focus on the role of formal and informal institutional settings in creating responsiveness. If we want to design regulatory agencies that are able to regulate responsively we need to know what kind of institutional settings promote responsiveness.

Since the 1970s, there has been a tremendous growth in government regulation pertaining to risk and the environment. These efforts have emerged quite legitimately because market processes alone cannot fully address risk-related concerns.' Without some kind of regulation or liability, for example, firms lack appropriate incentives to restrict their pollution. Similarly, when products or activities are extremely risky, if people are not cognizant of the risks they face, the firms generating the hazards may not have adequate incentives to issue warnings. To solve these problems, regulatory agencies have mounted a wide variety of efforts to improve the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the products we use, and the workplaces where we toil. Notwithstanding the legitimate impetus for these regulatory activities, government agencies sometimes overstep their bounds. The presence of market failure creates a potential role for government action, but this action must be well conceived. A clearly misguided and unduly burdensome regulation certainly would not be in society's best interest even if it were intended to address a legitimate social problem. As in other policy contexts, the task is to structure regulatory efforts to promote society's welfare as effectively as possible.