municipal solid waste market competition and the eu policy two of the main pillars of the eu solid waste policy are the proximity principle and the self sufficiency principle according to those waste should be disposed as close as possible to where it has been produced a likely effect of such provision is to prevent competition from neighbouring areas and increase the market power of local disposers with possible undesirable consequences for other firms in the vertical chain we show through a simple spatial model that one additional effect of the proximity principle and of the self sufficiency principle is to provide an incentive to collectors and waste producers to increase the amount of separated waste

keynes uncertainty and interest rates uncertainty plays an important role in the general theory particularly in the theory of interest rates keynes did not provide a theory of uncertainty but he did make some enlightening remarks about the direction he thought such a theory should take i argue that some modern innovations in the theory of probability allow us to build a theory which captures these keynesian insights if this is the right theory however uncertainty cannot carry its weight in keynes s arguments this does not mean that the conclusions of these arguments are necessarily mistaken in their best formulation they may succeed with merely an appeal to risk employment was a problem because investment was and investment was problematic because of the uncertainty of its return shapiro 1997 83 keynes clearly saw an important role for uncertainty in his general theory however few contemporaries agreed with him and subsequent keynesians generally obliterated the distinction between risk and uncertainty in part this was caused by keynes s informal presentation of his views on uncertainty in the general theory this paper has two aims the first is to sketch a formal theory of uncertainty which captures keynes s insights about the risk uncertainty distinction i argue that the theory of imprecise probabilities developed in recent years best captures keynes s intuitions about uncertainty in particular this theory provides a formal distinction between risk and uncertainty and allows for an analysis of keynes s weight of arguments however the second aim is to show that if this is right then keynes was wrong to draw the economic consequences of uncertainty that he did in broad terms i argue that uncertainty is economically impotent it only has effects in conjunction with some other feature of models or the world such as missing markets or agent irrationality but these features plus the existence of risk are sufficient to get the conclusions keynes wants these conclusions of keynes might be right but if so they can be justified without reference to keynesian uncertainty at the end of the day uncertainty is not as economically interesting as it appears

litter and waste management disposal taxes versus user charges littering and rubbish collection involve a divergence between private and social costs this note suggests there is a need to consider these two problems jointly viewed in isolation a user charge for rubbish collection has often been suggested as a means of internalizing the waste management externality however viewed as part of the wider problem it turns out that this charge should be negative that is there should be a refund or user subsidy associated with the proper disposal of rubbish

the most popular tax in europe lessons from the irish plastic bags levy there have been occasional ad hoc efforts to influence consumer behaviour by the imposition of product taxes that reflect external costs imposed by such products that are not initially included in their price in the spirit of this idea in 2002 ireland introduced a 15 euro cent tax on plastic shopping bags previously provided free of charge to customers at points of sale the effect of the tax on the use of plastic bags in retail outlets has been dramatic a reduction in use in the order of 90 and an associated gain in the form of reduced littering and negative landscape effects costs of administration have been very low amounting to about 3 of revenues because it was possible to integrate reporting and collection into existing value added tax reporting systems response from the main stakeholders the public and the retail industry has been overwhelmingly positive central to this acceptance has been a policy of extensive consultation with these stakeholders the fact that a product tax can influence consumer behaviour significantly will be of interest to many policymakers in this area this paper analyses the plastic bag levy success story and provides insights and general guidelines for other jurisdictions planning similar proposals

economic efficiency effects of alternative policies for reducing waste disposal abstract reducing the amount of municipal solid waste that is disposed of has become an important policy goal previous research argued that a virgin material tax offered an efficient method of meeting this goal and it continues to be considered as a policy option today this paper demonstrates however that a virgin material tax is not an efficient method of reducing waste but that an alternative policy a combined disposal tax and reuse subsidy is the combined disposal tax and reuse subsidy is theoretically consistent with unit based household charges for waste disposal but may have advantages in some situations

the effect of experience and quantity based pricing on the valuation of a curbside recycling program abstract quantity based pricing for garbage collection services and recycling programs are becoming increasingly popular methods of meeting municipal solid waste diversion objectives this article investigates household willingness to pay wtp for a pilot curbside recycling program crp in the presence of a quantity based pricing scheme for garbage collection services which allows a household to alter their garbage container size at a reduced price unlike previous studies that have modeled the simultaneity of these household decisions as a two step process we jointly estimate the household s intentions using a full information maximum likelihood fiml approach our results show a strong positive correlation between a household s wtp for a crp and its stated intention to reduce its garbage container size when a crp is offered the positive correlation suggests that wtp will be higher for households which are more likely to reduce their garbage container size thus in the presence of quantity based pricing a household s wtp for recycling more fully reflects the marginal social costs of garbage disposal

is probability theory relevant for uncertainty a post keynesian perspective stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0895 3309 28199124 295 3a1 3c129 3aiptrfu 3e2 0 co 3b2 gthe journal of economic perspectives is currently published by american economic association your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals aea html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgsun feb 17 13 40 22 2008

an experimental investigation of the patterns of international trade this study is the first attempt to create and study a laboratory economy with some of the prominent features of an international economic system the concept of multiple countries in which each country has its own technology preferences and resource endowments is introduced and operationalized the questions posed in the study are related to the law of comparative advantage factor price equalization terms of trade efficiency in production and exchange as guided by multiple and interacting markets and the effects of tariffs on international transactions the study builds on previous work in the experimental study of general equilibrium phenomena

efficiency effects of unit based pricing systems and institutional choices of waste collection municipal residential waste costs are rising therefore it is important to introduce measures that lower waste collection and disposal costs based on a large panel data set for the netherlands we show that unit based pricing systems are more important from a cost minimizing point of view than the institutional mode of waste collection in particular the bag based and frequency based pricing systems are preferred moreover dividing the cost effects between cost price and quantity effects we illustrate that lower administrative costs and a smaller waste quantity are the most important drivers of cost decreases it also shows that a disadvantage of the bag based system is that it is not easy to price compostable waste in addition if more general cost functions are analyzed these estimations suggest that there are economies of scale for small municipalities

do not trash the incentive monetary incentives and waste sorting this paper examines whether combining non monetary and monetary incentives increases municipal solid waste sorting we empirically investigate this issue exploiting the exogenous variation in waste management policies experienced during the years 1999 2008 by the 95 municipalities in the district of treviso italy using a panel regression analysis we estimate that pay as you throw payt incentive schemes increase by 17 the sorted to total waste ratio and that their effect reinforces that of a door to door dtd collection system which is equal to 15 7 moreover the panel structure of our dataset allows us to find learning and spatial effects associated to both payt and dtd

generation of household solid waste in oecd countries an empirical analysis using macroeconomic data while there are numerous studies that use household level and community level data to examine the determinants of household solid waste generation rates little empirical work has been previously undertaken using macroeconomic data using a cross sectional time series database of solid waste in countries that are part of the organisation for economic co operation and development oecd we provide evidence on the economic and demographic determinants of generation rates of household solid waste with respect to economic activity and population density the results are largely consistent with results found in previous studies however additional insights are gained on the effects of factors such as household size and composition as well as the degree of urbanization

keynesian uncertainty and liquidity preference in his economic writings keynes hints that his liquidity preference analysis is informed by the notion of evidential weight that first appears in his earlier treatise on probability this paper reviews keynes s distinction between probability and evidential weight and offers an account of its influence in his later work on the incentive to hold liquid assets alternative representations of the keynesian uncertainty liquidity preference relation are assessed in the light of this discussion james tobin s mean variance approach the keynesian fundamentalist view of paul davidson and the flexibility approach represented by louis makowski copyright 1994 by oxford university press

recycling in multifamily dwellings does convenience matter factors that decrease the the cost of recycling have significant positive correlations with recycling rates in multifamily dwellings mfds waste management experts have previously used anecdotes to infer a link between convenience and waste diversion rates in mfd recycling programs this article confirms and quantifies that link by applying probit and double censored to bit analysis to survey data from 214 households in urbana illinois we find a strong connection between recycling rates and the perceived presence of adequate interior space for processing recyclables and distance to recycling bins affects container recycling intensity the results have implications for cost effective design of mfd recycling programs jel di q2 i introduction statistics from the u s environmental protection agency epa show that from 1960 to 1997 u s recycling rates rose from 6 4 to 28 and 9 000 curbside recycling programs were established epa 1998 such programs have traditionally been geared toward single family dwellings sfds conventional doctrine has been that recycling activity is likely to be limited in multifamily dwellings mfds however as residential recycling rates for sfds plateau in the united states solid waste managers and policy makers are becoming increasingly interested in mfd recycling programs by now at least half of all mfds may have access to a curbside recycling program epa 2001 stevens 1999 and the epa 1999 2001 show that waste diversion rates the fraction of a household s waste that is recycled instead of discarded as refuse tend to be slightly lower in mfds than in sfds but some mfd recycling programs have yielded diversion rates as high as 60 what factors influence the recycling rates chosen by residents of mfds in a detailed nationwide study the epa 2001 found that successful 20 or higher diversion rate mfd recycling programs tended to have large and numerous containers provided by the recycling service waste management experts emphasize the importance of convenience in yielding high waste diversion rates in mfd recycling programs with some record setting programs using strategies like doorstep pickup of recyclables in high rise apartment buildings epa 1999 such anecdotes are intriguing however although much work has studied sfd recycling behavior little has been done to explore mfd recycling in a rigorous statistical fashion a number of economists have studied the sensitivity of recycling behavior to pricing policies that alter the costs and benefits of recycling relative to disposal 1 another body of work has investigated the influence of nonpecuniary policies and variables on recycling in sfds work by vining and ebreo 1990 and ebreo and vining 2000 supports the notion that convenience may increase the number of people that identify themselves as recyclers however their data are strictly qualitative the earlier study dates from a time when only community drop off recycling was available and the later study is focused on public attitudes toward and expectations regarding changes in recycling policy jakus et al 1996 1997 use economic models and rigorous empirical analysis to study the influence on actual recycling behavior of recycling promotional campaigns and policies to alter the time cost of recycling they find evidence that recycling participation is not a function of home ownership or renting status per se however these articles do not delve into the details of mfd recycling because the data were collected in the context of rural drop off recycling a few studies have turned their attention to mfd recycling stevens 1999 finds that programs with high aggregate diversion rates are likely to have a relatively large ratio of collection bins to households mcquaid and murdoch 1996 conduct a qualitative analysis of mfd recycling in edinburgh that suggests that housing characteristics such as floor level presence of an elevator and household size may influence recycling rates

on the dynamics of recycling and natural resources we study the dynamic impact of recycling through its effect on the production set of the economy and its relationship with natural resources the contribution of renewable and recyclable resources for sustainability is studied although in the short run recycling may alleviate resource scarcity in the long run it is not enough to compensate for the exhaustibility of non renewable resources and the possibility of obtaining non decreasing output paths crucially depends on the extent to which production rests on renewable resources furthermore recycling interacts with natural resource growth surprisingly not always favoring sustainability the production and recycling function is a generalization of the traditional production function providing an integrated view of regular production and recycling and representing the production set of the economy when a recycling technology is available

measuring the economic benefits of recycling the case of the waste agricultural film in korea recently increase of the waste agricultural film waf raises the loss of the resources and produces the environmental damage in korea the korean government has established the basic plan for increasing the recycling rate and abating the environmental damage the objective of this paper is to estimate the economic benefits attached to the policy of recycling the waf using contingent valuation method aiming to provide policy makers with useful information to make an informed public decision in recycling the waf the overall results show that the respondents well accepted the contingent market and would be willing to pay a significant amount for the proposed policy of recycling the waf the mean willingness to pay and the truncated mean willingness to pay per household were 4641 korean won us 3 6 and 5730 korean won us 4 4 respectively total economic benefits for the population amounted to approximately 14 33 billion korean won us 11 02 million per year this quantitative information can be use

environmental regulation by private contest abstract it is widely expected that the recent trend in the us eu and elsewhere towards an increased role for private agents and agencies in the formulation and enforcement of environmental regulation will continue if environmental regulation is to be privatised in this way it is natural to ask how far the activities of environmental groups on whose shoulders much of the responsibility for defending the environment is likely to fall should be subsidised or taxed in this paper we identify the trade offs involved and characterise the optimal subsidy tax the analysis is argued to have significant implications for how governments should think about the way in which fiscal law treats environmental ngo s

garbage recycling and illicit burning or dumping abstract with garbage and recycling as the only two disposal options we confirm prior results that the optimal curbside fee for garbage collection equals the direct resource cost plus external environment cost when illicit burning or dumping is a third disposal option that cannot be taxed directly the optimal curbside tax on garbage changes sign the optimal fee structure is a deposit refund system a tax on all output plus a rebate on proper disposal through either recycling or garbage collection the output tax helps achieve the first best allocation even though it affects the choice between consumption and untaxed leisure

estimating consumer willingness to supply and willingness to pay for curbside recycling we estimate the willingness to pay for curbside recycling based on a contingent valuation survey of 600 residents of a large southeastern united states city the best estimate of willingness to pay for curbside recycling is 2 29 month after adjustment for hypothetical bias we also report the results of a field experiment designed to test the effectiveness of explicit monetary incentives and communication appeals to influence the decision to recycle and the quantity of materials to recycle while households respond to the monetary cost of recycling the effects of the token ex ante incentives and appeals appear to be small jel d61 q21

marshall and walras disequilibrium trades and the dynamics of equilibration in the continuous double auction market prices and quantities converge to the theoretical competitive equilibria in continuous double auction markets the double auction is not a tatonnement mechanism disequilibrium trades take place the absence of any influence of disequilibrium trades which have the capacity to change the theoretical equilibrium appears to be due to a property found in the marshallian model of single market adjustments the marshallian model incorporates a principle of self organizing coordination that mysteriously determines the sequence in which specific pairs of agents trade in an environment in which market identities and agent preferences are not public disequilibrium trades along the marshallian path of trades do not change the theoretical equilibrium the substance of this paper is to demonstrate that the marshallian principle captures a natural tendency of the adjustment in single continuous double auction markets and to suggest how it takes place the marshallian model of quantity adjustment and the walrasian model of market price adjustment can be seen as companion theories that explain the allocation and price processes of a market the marshallian model explains the evolution of the allocation who will meet and trade and the walrasian excess demand explains the evolution of prices when they do

assessing the causal effect of curbside collection on recycling behavior in a non randomized experiment with self reported outcome this paper aims at identifying the causal effect of reducing behavioral costs of participation in household waste recycling through curbside collection using propensity score matching and differences in differences estimation with individual level panel data we estimate the effect of curbside collection its variation between types of recyclables and sociodemographic background variables and its elasticity with regard to the distance to collection containers in the bring scheme condition we argue that in a quasi experimental setting dd may be systematically upward biased due to the outcome variable being self reported while ddd may be systematically downward biased in the presence of spillover effects accordingly both estimators can be combined to derive upper and lower bounds of the true effect we find that a curbside scheme has no effect on paper recycling but increases recycling participation by between 10 and 25 points for plastic and packaging moreover we find systematic treatment effect heterogeneity with regard to pre treatment distance to collection sites and individual environmental attitudes but not by socio demography the results of our analysis therefore have important implications for effective and cost efficient implementation of environmental protection policies in urban areas

enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted in the united states empirical studies of the enforcement of continuous compliance with environmental regulations especially air and water pollution regulations have repeatedly demonstrated the following i for most sources the frequency of surveillance is quite low ii even when violations are discovered fines or other penalties are rarely assessed in most states iii sources are nonetheless thought to be in compliance a large part of the time the evidence for the apparently low level of enforcement activity is found in a number of case studies of state and local enforcement of air and water quality regulations conducted jointly by the environmental protection agency epa and council on environmental quality ceg together with periodic surveys of implementation of air and water quality legislation conducted by the general accounting office gao these surveys show

on the second best policy of household s waste recycling this study analyzes the second best household s waste recycling policy if we assume the first best economy with no illegal disposal or transaction costs then unit pricing an advance disposal fee and a recycling subsidy are required in order to achieve the social optimum such that both the sum of unit pricing and an advance disposal fee and the sum of unit pricing and a recycling subsidy are equal to the marginal disposal cost furthermore the first best outcome can also be obtained by a producer take back requirement system in the real economy however various factors prevent the first best optimal outcome in this study we consider two factors one being the transaction cost associated with a recycling subsidy or refund and the other being illegal disposal by the consumer if a recycling subsidy or a deposit refund system is adopted a transaction cost associated with it will be generated alternatively if unit pricing is adopted some of the consumed goods may be disposed of illegally we show the complete trade off between unit pricing and a recycling subsidy in other words we can not adopt unit pricing and a recycling subsidy simultaneously as a result there are three candidates for the second best policy unit pricing with an advance disposal fee a deposit refund system and a producer take back requirement system which of these three policies is the second best policy will depend on the relative magnitude of the price of a recycled good and the marginal transaction cost associated with a recycling subsidy or the refund in a deposit refund system generally if the price of a recycled good is positive and the marginal transaction cost is relatively high unit pricing with an advance disposal fee is the second best policy however where the price of a recycled good is negative and the marginal transaction cost is relatively high a producer take back requirement system is the second best policy further where the marginal transaction cost is relatively low a deposit refund system is the second best policy regardless of whether the price of a recycled good is positive or negative

financing a competitive recycling initiative in switzerland abstract the purpose of the paper is to enhance the understanding of different pricing systems within the real world of solid waste management first the effect on recycling behaviour of citizens and second the effect on the budget goals and third the operational logic of different economic measures will be analyzed hence it helps practitioners understand and cope with the challenge of meeting the zero profit budget goal in public solid waste management while inducing behaviour change in the regional solid waste system the question how can robust recycling strategies be financed is addressed the analysis draws on a system dynamics model for solid waste management that is based on a model framework on human behaviour and public policy that embraces an evolutionary feedback perspective the model structure was deduced from an ex post analysis of observed phenomena in solid waste management such as recurring budget deficits at the local level in switzerland the paper illustrates how the model was used as a policy lab in which various pricing and incentive strategies were tested that allowed addressing what if questions under controlled conditions the various policy experiments illustrated crucial trade offs between zero profit budget goals at the local level and the administration of a successful recycling initiative different scenario experiments show that under worst case conditions economic instrument are not sufficient in order to yield a robust policy outcome

curbside recycling in the presence of alternatives we measure the extent to which curbside access affects quantity recycled we use novel data to distinguish between new recycling and material diverted from other recycling modes we find that the marginal impact of expanding curbside programs on total recycled quantities is small in part because curbside programs significantly cannibalize returns from drop off recycling centers failure to account for cannibalization from other modes may substantially over estimate the benefits of curbside programs we conclude with simple cost effectiveness comparisons results suggest that incremental expansion of curbside access may not be cost effective

pollution taxes and revenue recycling abstract discussions of environmental policy and the tax system have emphasized the value of pollution tax revenues which can be used to reduce other tax distortions in the economy however by raising private marginal production costs environmental taxes also tend to reduce gdp and exacerbate the welfare costs of conventional taxes for environmental taxes in consumption goods industries the net welfare change from these two effects is negative unless this good is a relatively weak substitute for leisure an estimate for the optimal pollution tax with full revenue recycling is 63 to 78 of marginal environmental damages

the determinants of household recycling social influence public policies and environmental preferences abstractour article aims at understanding the determinants of households selective waste sorting behaviours based on data from an original survey of 694 individuals in the french provence alpes cote d azur region the applied literature focuses mainly on countries with high recycling rates we focus on a region with the lowest recycling rate in france a country that recycles less than the european country average we first apply polychoric principal components analysis to reduce the number of explanatory variables to a set of six factors in a second step we use a probit model to estimate the probability of waste sorting as a function of these factors this model tests several hypotheses emerging from the recent literature on behavioural economics applied to households selective sorting this literature pays particular attention to the social influence on recycling behaviour which has been studied mostly by sociologists and psychologists the results of our empirical analysis confirm some of the fin

household responses to pricing garbage by the bag this paper estimates household reaction to the implementation of unit pricing for the collection of residential garbage we gather original data on weight and volume of weekly garbage and recycling of 75 households in charlottesville virginia both before and after the start of a program that requires an eighty cent sticker on each bag of garbage this data set is the first of its kind we estimate household demands for the collection of garbage and recyclable material the effect on density of household garbage and the amount of illegal dumping by households we also estimate the probability that a household chooses each method available to reduce its garbage in response to the implementation of this unit pricing program we find that households 1 reduced the weight of their garbage by 14 2 reduced the volume of garbage by 37 and 3 increased the weight of their recyclable materials by 16 we estimate that additional illegal or at least suspicious disposal accounts for 0 42 pounds per person per week or 28 of the reduction in garbage observed at the curb this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

managing municipal solid waste with unit based pricing policy effects and responsiveness to pricing many municipalities across the united states have turned to unit based pricing also known as pay as you throw payt as a vehicle for reducing municipal solid waste generation increasing recycling and promoting equity in paying for the service in this paper we reevaluate the standard analytical methods used to examine the impact of payt in the literature and illustrate that econometric shortcomings may have led to underestimation of policy effects a two tier analytical approach to examining payt program effects is proposed and is demonstrated in a case study of new hampshire municipalities

greenhouse gas emissions waste and recycling policy abstract this paper examines least cost policies for waste reduction incorporating upstream greenhouse gas externalities associated with the production of consumption goods from various materials in particular we decompose the effect of deposit refund advance disposal fees and recycling subsidies on upstream greenhouse gas emissions we find that the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are of the same order as or larger than the benefits of reducing solid waste disposal implying larger optimal total waste reduction than previous studies furthermore the least cost intervention levels will be material specific and vary substantially across materials finally despite the reductions in emissions implied by increased recycling rates direct recycling subsidies are more costly and generate less emissions reductions than a deposit refund or advance disposal fee

designing economic instruments for the environment in a decentralized fiscal system when external effects are important markets will be inefficient and economists have considered several broad classes of economic instruments to correct these inefficiencies however the standard economic analysis has tended to neglect important distinctions and interactions between the geographic scope of pollutants the enforcement authority of various levels of government and the fiscal responsibilities of the levels of government for example externalities generated in a particular local area may be confined to the local area or may spill over to other jurisdictions also local governments may be well informed about how best to regulate or enforce pollution control within their jurisdiction but they may not consider the effects of their actions on other jurisdictions finally the existence of locally generated waste emissions affects the appropriate assignment of both expenditure and tax responsibilities among levels of government the standard analysis therefore focuses mainly upon an aggregate or national perspective it typically ignores the possibility that the externality may be created and addressed by local governments and it does not consider the implications of decentralization for the design of economic instruments targeted at environmental problems this paper examines the implications of decentralization for the design of corrective policies that is how does one design economic instruments in a decentralized fiscal system in which externalities exist at the local level and in which subnational governments have the power to provide local public services as well as to choose tax instruments that can both finance these expenditures and correct the market failures of externalities

price expectations and international quota trading an experimental evaluation this paper reports a preliminary experimental test of international quota trading on a market characterized by several dominant traders uncertain quota demand and supply imply true market clearing prices that in general differ from an expected competitive quota price however in the experiment the expected price level emerges as a focal point on which the bulk of quota trade contracts are keyed thus incomplete price discovery occurs

the effect of bottle laws on income new empirical results eleven us states have bottle laws deposit refund programs that combine a consumption tax with a recycling rebate when states set the bottle deposit low enough it becomes a tax on high wage earners for whom the opportunity cost of their time prevents them from returning containers for their deposit however this bottle deposit will still be high enough that harvesting recyclables provides employment for low wage earners using individual data on observed cash recycling behavior this paper shows that an unintended consequence of bottle laws is that they have the potential to increase the incomes of very low wage workers

the economics of household solid waste generation and disposal abstract we develop a household production model of waste management that explicitly incorporates many of the technical and behavioral elements germane to current regulatory and non regulatory solid waste policy initiatives examination of first order conditions shows the interaction among household preferences these production options and external prices and fees a simplified simulation of our model illustrates these relationships showing that household response elasticities can vary widely over common price ranges and that relatively large household welfare gains may be obtained by adopting curbside recycling and unit pricing programs

nimby taxes matter the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes this paper links the theoretical and empirical literatures on interjurisdictional tax and regulatory competition focusing on the case of state hazardous waste disposal taxes it begins by demonstrating that local environmental taxes can be inefficient and that the inefficiency depends on the tax elasticity of polluters responses the paper then uses panel data from the toxics release inventory to estimate the magnitude of the tax elasticities and to demonstrate the empirical relevance of the theoretical inefficiency of local taxes 1999 elsevier science s a all rights reserved

reflections on the double dividend debate we survey the history of carbon taxation the range of market based instruments mbis of environmental control and the state of the double dividend debate in order to suggest directions for future research into mbis returning mbi revenues as lower distortionary taxes rather than as lump sums raises aggregate welfare but we favour mbis which raise little or no revenue for reasons of political acceptability to interest groups at the same time the overall case for any environmental improvement is weaker because of general equilibrium interactions with prior distortionary taxes research seems most necessary on quantifying the efficiency benefits of market control of heterogeneous polluters the benefits of environmental improvement the tax interaction effect and the various information costs of an mbi all on a case by case basis for different pollutants and places

environmental regulation of households an empirical review of economic and psychological factors abstract the literature on sustainable consumption and environmental regulation of household behavior is dominated by conceptual and normative approaches as a result many suggestions lack a firm empirical basis to overcome this deficiency econometric studies in three areas of environmentally relevant activities of households are reviewed residential use of energy generation of solid waste and recycling and residential use of water next to price and income elasticities attention is devoted to individual socio economic features and psychological factors such as attitudes knowledge perceptions and values potential psychological determinants and related insights are further examined by discussing a range of representative and illustrative statistical psychological studies of environmental behavior one important general finding is that there are very few empirical studies that systematically combine socio economic and psychological determinants a range of insights for environmental policy is derived and research recommendations are offered

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

garbage and recycling with endogenous local policy abstract this paper estimates the impact of garbage fees and curbside recycling programs on garbage and recycling amounts without correction for endogenous policy a price per bag of garbage has a negative effect on garbage and a positive cross price effect on recycling correction for endogenous local policy increases the effect of the user fee on garbage and the effect of curbside recycling collection on recycling introducing a fee of 1 per bag is estimated to reduce garbage by 412 pounds per person per year 44 but to increase recycling by only 30 pounds per person per year

does food sorting prevents and improves sorting of household waste a case in sweden this paper analyses household behaviour as response to changes in waste management systems the paper discusses the results of a case study from vellinge municipality sweden where the introduction of separate food waste collection is thought to have a role in reducing the total amount of household waste and improving the sorting of packaging waste the study relies on data from official waste statistics and a survey of 117 municipal residents focusing on households perceptions attitudes and self reflected changes in waste sorting behaviour the respondents mentioned the increased environmental awareness and the convenience of food waste sorting among the primary reasons for the perceived changes in personal waste sorting routines the study also tested the significance of other variables such as income employment economic activity socio demographics infrastructure waste tariffs illegal dumping and awareness raising campaigns most of the variables were static and none showed sufficient correlation to the observed reduction of waste collection rates and the improvements in sorting other waste fractions the analysed case had particularly high income levels which were the main dynamic variable under study the analysis suggests that we may be observing an example of a decoupling between economic growth and waste generation rates this observation is explained by the kuznets phenomena and it is being discussed in this paper less

the cold shiver of not giving enough on the social cost of recycling campaigns governments sometimes try to increase individuals contributions to public goods through appeals to consumer responsibility rather than by economic incentives for example in recycling campaigns using standard consumer theory one would hardly expect such campaigns to work at all but if consumers are motivated by norms appeals may work through changing consumers perception of the normrequirement however increasing voluntary contributions through appeals may come at a social cost the reason is that appeals work through imposing a heavier perceived responsibility on consumers this represents a welfare loss which is not necessarily outweighed by warm glow benefits

an eu recycling target what does the dutch evidence tell us the european union eu advocates a household waste recycling rate of more than 65 although the netherlands has already invested heavily in recycling policies this is still a big challenge as nowadays this rate is approximately 50 on average and very few no municipalities have a rate above 65 given this practice it is possible to learn from the dutch experience which policies are effective in increasing recycling rates based on a large panel data set for the netherlands we show that unit based pricing avoiding a duo bin for unsorted and compostable waste and reducing the frequency of collecting unsorted and compostable waste at the curbside are effective in raising the recycling rate however only a bag based pricing system has a substantial effect but this policy can have some adverse effects other unit based pricing systems have effects of less than 10 points in nearly all cases changing the frequency of collection of recyclables has no or very small effects moreover the complementarity between unit based pricing and curbside service is low overall it seems very difficult to reach the eu goal of 65 with the policies applied

a technical definition of uncertainty and the long run non neutrality of money ever since knight s 1921 seminal work some economists have drawn a distinction between uncertainty and risk in order to demonstrate that this difference has important implications for understanding the operations of an entrepreneurial economy lawson 1985 is the latest to discuss the need for the analysis of societal interaction 1 in an economic world where uncertainty as opposed to mathematical risk is a pervasive fact of life p 909 lawson correctly associates the concept of uncertainty with the situation where there is no basis whatever upon which to form any calculable probability uncertainty in this account arises when the probability relation is numerically indeterminate and non comparable to other probability relations 1985 p 914

designing call auction institutions is double dutch the best this paper is an exercise in the institutional design of call markets schwartz i988 whitcomb i985 using the experimental laboratory as a test bed we evaluate the comparative performance1 of three new institutions for exchange when all trades are simultaneously executed at a uniform price call markets have been used on many european and israeli stock exchanges and for the daily opening on the new york american and tokyo stock exchanges in all outstanding listed issues in some versions the bids offers are verbal in others written in some cases the procedure is walrasian orders may be modified after a trial price is given whitcomb i985 also see jarecki i976 for the walrasian mechanism implemented with a unanimity stopping rule in the london bullion market in france new issues are offered in fixed quantity using modified uniform price sealed bid auction rules mcdonald and jaquillat i974 the rules of trading on all these exchanges are subject to incremental adjustment in the light of experience in recognition of this continuing adaptation the chicago mercantile exchange publishes its consolidated rules as a loose leaf three ring notebook these considerations motivate our interest in examining three potential new exchange mechanisms as their names suggest these institutions are generalisations of auctions which already exist in the field 2 double dutch dd is a generalisation of the dutch auction double english ee a generalisation of the english auction and dutch english de a special form of tatonnement using a single clock which is a dutch clock to buyers and an english clock to sellers our generalisations make the supply quantity endogenous thus broadening the scope of english and dutch auctions to markets in which both buyers and sellers are active in the exchange process two cited disadvantages of sealed bid offer call markets schwartz i988 pp 442 6 are corrected by

heterogeneous preferences for community recycling programs this paper examines household preferences for community recycling programs which have both public and private good dimensions the data come from a survey conducted in seattle wa which elicited stated preference contingent ratings for different recycling programs relative to status quo with experimental variation in the overall community recycling rate achieved and expected household cost the recycling rate is interpreted as capturing the public benefits of recycling programs and constitutes the most common measure used by policy agencies for setting waste management objectives and evaluating policy initiatives the analysis begins with fixed parameter models that explore different ways of handling rating data and mixed logit estimations that capture household preference heterogeneity both within and across different recycling programs this analysis yields unique estimates of willingness to pay for an increase in the community recycling rate predicted individual specific utility parameters are then regressed on household background information to explicitly examine the nature of preference heterogeneity overall this paper generates interpretable policy relevant insights into the public and private good dimensions of community recycling programs

costly offers and the equilibration properties of the multiple unit double auction under conditions of unpredictable shifts of demand and supply the paper reports on the behavior of markets in which a cost is imposed in the form of a tax on bids and asks but not contracts that are tendered in the market the markets were nonstationary in the sense that market demand and market supply shifted unpredictably in each period the results are as follows 1 a market equilibration process is observed across the periods of nonstationary markets 2 the price discovery process in the costly offer condition was incomplete relative to the free offer case 3 price equilibration with the offer cost was slower and efficiencies were reduced

does garbage pricing increase the immoral disposal of household waste abstractsome empirical studies have attempted to clarify the mechanism of illegal dumping by examining the degree to which per bag pricing plays a role however previous research on the behaviour of avoiding paying a charge for waste collection has tended to neglect so called immoral disposal which is less risky than illegal dumping because there is no legal penalty in this study we define immoral disposal as the dumping of waste in a manner that is immoral but not illegal to detect the existence of immoral disposal we apply a spatial econometric approach namely an extended panel spatial durbin model to identify the actual spillover effect of garbage pricing in neighbouring municipalities on immoral disposal from the total waste a major finding of this study is that immoral disposal exists in unit based pricing two tiered pricing and fixed pricing

effects of unit based garbage pricing a differences in differences approach using a unique 10 year dataset of all 458 dutch municipalities we apply a differences in differences approach to estimate the effect of unit based pricing on household waste quantities and recycling community level studies of unit based pricing typically do not include fixed effects at the local level we find that failure to do so may substantially inflate the estimated price effect we also find that unit based pricing may be endogenous and use instrumental variables to account for this our analysis shows that user fees depend on user fees in neighboring jurisdictions policy interaction our estimate of the garbage reduction per 1 user fee is lower than any previous estimate bar one the price effect depends on the pricing system weight based systems reduce garbage quantities more than volume based systems user fees increase recycling especially of paper but not nearly as much as they reduce garbage quantities we find no evidence for waste tourism or illegal dumping

household behavior under alternative pay as you throw systems for solid waste disposal in 1994 residents of marietta georgia participated in a pay as you throw solid waste demonstration project rather than pay a fixed monthly fee for collection half of the resi dents paid a fee per reusable trash can and half paid for each nonreusable trash bag collected data from both a sample of households and city wide totals indicate that the programs signifi cantly reduced waste set outs even after account ingfor increases in unpriced recycling the bag program caused larger reductions 36 than the subscription can program 14 rough esti mates of the program indicate both savings for residents and social welfare increases jel q20

the divisive and disruptive effect of a weight based waste fee abstract the ability of economic incentives to promote environmentally friendly behavior has been questioned in the literature most studies investigating this issue are grounded in the agent based rational choice model the aim of this study is to expand our insights by applying an alternative theoretical framework combining elements from classical institutional economics and self determination theory to study incentives for waste sorting the analysis is based on data from a norwegian municipality ulstein which introduced and later terminated a differentiated waste fee there are three main findings first the important role of normative motivation for sorting household waste is confirmed second the economic incentive had a divisive effect on the motivation to sort household waste perceived autonomy linked to fundamental values about environmental concern seems to play an important role in explaining why half the sample reports no extra efforts in sorting waste as a response to the economic incentive the other half was influenced by the external logic given to them i e to save costs and hence report increased motivation to sort household waste finally an increased practice of illegal waste disposal was observed as a response to the differentiated waste fee

optimal policies for solid waste disposal taxes subsidies and standards abstract pricing trash collection and disposal services can be politically unpopular and may lead to increased illegal disposal of trash several studies have shown that deposit refund systems can act like disposal charges without the illegal disposal problem and thus can generate an optimal amount of solid waste disposal we assess the efficiency implications of an alternative policy currently in use in some states in the u s and considered at the federal level recycled content standards these are requirements that a certain fraction of total material use in production be comprised of secondary materials we find that such standards by themselves cannot generate the optimal amount of disposal but must be combined with additional taxes on both the final product and other inputs to production moreover the information requirements for setting the optimal standards and accompanying taxes are high the deposit refund approach would be preferred in most cases

reconsideration of an advance disposal fee policy for end of life durable goods abstract this paper analyzes the optimal waste disposal policy for durable goods the existing literature does not differentiate between durable and non durable goods and concludes that the social optimum can be attained by either a disposal fee df policy or an advance disposal fee adf policy in an economy without transaction costs this study shows however that in such an economy the first best policy is not an adf policy but a df policy adoption of an adf policy results in excessive consumption and disposal compared to the social optimum in addition under an adf policy the lifetime of durable goods is shorter than the social optimum if we take transaction costs into account we must consider the second best policy an adf policy can be considered as second best in some situations since it has some transaction cost advantages over other policies an adf policy can be second best either if net disposal cost is relatively low or if repair cost is relatively high

markets as information gathering tools the academic literature wall street commentary and even daily news reporting reflect a belief that markets can anticipate events the current movements in the stock market are interpreted as reflecting the likelihood that the federal reserve system will change interest rates futures markets are interpreted as reflecting the best estimates of things to come movements in individual stock prices are thought to anticipate earnings reports or the probability of a merger or buyout if we want to know about future weather in the south we should study the orange juice futures the academic journals are filled with the concept of rational expectations in which current prices are supposed to reflect the sum of all knowledge in the system prices according to this theory are a statistic that indicates the aggregation of information about underlying states of the economy those who are outsiders to the information in the system become insiders by simply observing the economic activity

an economic analysis of household waste management abstract this paper provides a comprehensive model of household waste management policy incorporating the possibility of waste reduction effort by the firm and the household and of illegal waste disposal by the household when household waste reduction effort is insignificant the first best optimum can be achieved using various combinations of environmental tax on the firm and waste collection charge on the household however when household waste reduction effort is significant the first best optimum is not achievable and explicit monitoring of illegal waste disposal is needed rendering a simple pigouvian tax sub optimal this paper solves for the second best optimal policy and provides some comparative statics of the optimal policy

evaluating unit based pricing of residential solid waste a panel data analysis municipalities introduced unit based pricing ubp with the aim of achieving a decrease in household waste generation and for the replacement of unsorted waste with recycling although many studies have shown that ubp has a short run effect on recycling few works have tackled the long run effect on waste generation and recycling by using panel data for 665 japanese cities over 8 years we examine the long run effect of ubp on waste generation and recycling the estimation results in waste generation suggest that there is a rebound effect though a small one we confirm that the effect of ubp on recycling sustains for the long run we also find that the short and long run responses to an economic incentive for recycling activities differ with income groups recycling among the high income group has not been promoted by implementation of ubp but people in that group are willing to participate in recycling without an economic incentive in contrast recycling activity within the low income group is strongly motivated by ubp for many years