Price Pass-Through of Austria’s Single-Use Plastics Producer Charges: Evidence from Retail Offer Spells

Felix Reichel

No whkb9_v1, Thesis Commons from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Single-use plastics (SUPs) impose substantial environmental costs. Following Directive (EU) 2019/904, Austria introduced producer charges and mandatory participation in collection and recycling systems. This thesis exploits a monthly aggregated and disaggregated panel of retail offer spells drawn from a price-comparison platform to estimate the extent to which compliance costs pass through to posted online prices in Austria. The treated sample comprises keyword-matched SUP products—balloons, to-go cups, wet wipes, plastic bags, food containers, tobacco-filter items, beverage bottles, and plastic wraps—observed alongside a control group of non-SUP listings over 2020–2024. A two-way fixed-effects (TWFE) specification places the average post-treatment price increase at approximately 4.1 percent. A sequential TWFE model that disaggregates the administrative reporting phase (from March 2023) from the payment-due phase (from March 2024) reveals that the larger adjustment occurs during the earlier reporting stage, with a reporting-only effect of approximately 8.1 percent and an incremental payment-phase effect of 5.6 percent. For balloons—a category subject to pronounced regulatory fee exposure— event-study estimates exceed 50 percent in the months immediately following the initial payment date and remain elevated throughout most of the post-treatment window. Taken together, these findings indicate that Austrian online retailers began adjusting prices in advance of fee payment deadlines, a pattern consistent with anticipatory pass-through of expected compliance costs rather than a discrete response to realized payments. As the data contain price observations but not quantity data, the analysis speaks to price incidence and does not extend to consumption or environmental outcomes.

Date: 2026-06-02
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Working Paper: Price Pass-Through of Austria's Single-Use Plastics Producer Charges: Evidence from Retail Offer Spells (2026)
Working Paper: Price Pass-Through of Austria’s Single-Use Plastics Producer Charges: Evidence from Retail Offer Spells (2026)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:thesis:whkb9_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/whkb9_v1

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