A (Green) Switch in Time Saves Nine: Assessing the Environmental Damage of the European Truck Cartel

Ilona Dielen, Patrice Bougette and Christophe Charlier
Additional contact information
Ilona Dielen: Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France
Patrice Bougette: Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France

No 2026-06, GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France

Abstract: This study examines how the cartel of European truck manufacturers coordinated the timing of compliance with emission standards, generating additional air pollution without violating environmental regulations. Although firms formally complied with environmental law, collusion restricted competition over cleaner technologies, highlighting that anticompetitive agreements can have significant environmental and health consequences. First, we quantify the volume of particulate emissions attributable to cartel behavior by constructing two plausible counterfactual scenarios for truck fleet composition, identifying substantial excess emissions of approximately 119 thousand tonnes of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Second, we estimate the health impact of traffic-related PM2.5 emissions on infant respiratory outcomes using a panel of 199 European subregions observed over an 18-year period. To address endogeneity concerns, we exploit exogenous variation in EURO emission standards through a shift-share instrumental-variable strategy. The resulting elasticity allows us to compute the number of infant respiratory hospital admissions attributable to the cartel under counterfactual competitive conditions. We estimate that earlier, competition-driven adoption of cleaner technologies could have reduced average yearly infant hospital admissions by 12–18 cases per 1,000 births at the NUTS 2 level.

Keywords: Air pollution; Truck cartel; Anticompetitive agreement; Environmental damage; EURO standards; European Commission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 K21 L41 Q51 Q52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52
Date: 2026-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-eur, nep-law and nep-tre
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://195.220.190.85/GREDEG-WP-2026-06.pdf First version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gre:wpaper:2026-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Patrice Bougette ().