Economic analysis of e-waste market

Prudence Dato

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, 2017, vol. 17, issue 6, No 4, 815-837

Abstract: Abstract Despite international regulations that prohibit the trans-boundary movement of electronic and electric waste (e-waste), non-reusable e-waste is often illegally mixed with reusable e-waste and results in being sent to developing countries. As developing countries are not well prepared to properly manage e-waste, this illegal trade has important negative externalities and creates ‘environmental injustice’. The two main information problems on the e-waste market are imperfect monitoring and imperfect information on the so-called ‘degree of purity’ of the e-waste. In this paper, we use a simple bilateral North–South trade model and show that there exists an alternative e-waste market that is better than the standard e-waste market for developing countries. This alternative e-waste market is a joint trade in reusable and non-reusable e-waste. In both cases, we consider demand and supply sides, plus the equilibrium of the e-waste market to show that the alternative market that we propose is better for developing countries.

Keywords: E-waste; Market; Imperfect information; International trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 F18 L51 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10784-017-9350-4

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