Environmental Policy with Collective Waste Disposal

Stephen F. Hamilton, Thomas W. Sproul, David Sunding and David Zilberman

No 151142, 2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Centralized collection and disposal is an integral component of waste management strategies for many solid and liquid wastes, and carbon capture and storage is currently being considered for gaseous waste. In this paper we show how collective waste disposal systems introduce essential changes in the design of optimal environmental policy. Absent collective disposal, an optimal environmental policy imposes relatively stringent regulations on polluters in regions where local environmental damage functions are “high”; however, under collective waste disposal, the optimal environmental policy level increases monotonically over distance from the disposal site, and this is true irrespective of the degree of spatial heterogeneity in local environmental damage functions. We characterize the optimal spatial pattern of environmental policy levels under collective waste disposal and identify optimal membership size for waste disposal networks comprised of homogeneous producers.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Journal Article: Environmental policy with collective waste disposal (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea13:151142

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.151142

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