How much does recycling reduce imports? Evidence from metallic raw materials

Damien Dussaux and Matthieu Glachant
Additional contact information
Damien Dussaux: CERNA i3 - Centre d'économie industrielle i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In countries with limited exhaustible natural resources, reducing imports of raw materials is increasingly viewed as a significant side benefit of waste recycling. Using a panel of 21 developed and developing countries from 1994 to 2008, we seek to measure the size of this benefit by estimating the impact of metal scrap recovery on imports of metallic raw materials. We address the endogeneity of metal recovery with exogenous country characteristics including population density and the level of education. We also develop a strategy for controlling for the price volatility in raw material markets. We find that domestic metal recovery is substituted for imports of secondary raw materials while leaving imports of primary raw materials unaffected. The overall effect is a 3.3% decrease in imports of metallic raw materials when metal recovery grows by 10%. Thus, waste recycling policies may have a sizeable impact on trade balance and on security of raw material supply.

Keywords: Raw materials; trade; recycling; metal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-09-19
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2018, pp.1 - 19. ⟨10.1080/21606544.2018.1520650⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: How much does recycling reduce imports? Evidence from metallic raw materials (2019)
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:hal:journl:hal-01877595

DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2018.1520650

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().