THE ECONOMICS OF SOLID WASTE REDUCTION

Robin R. Jenkins, US EPA Headquarters, Washington, DC, US

Part 1 Introduction: the problem with the market for solid waste services; the primary purpose of this book; existing research on the Household's Response to User Fees for SWS; factors that affect residential and commercial demand for SWS; characteristic of the data collected; a summary of the empirical results; an outline of this book. Part 2 A review of the literature: the impact of volume-based user fees; the impact of service-level-based user fees and service levels; the impact of income and other socioeconomic variables; population density. part 3 Models of the household and the firm: a model to explain the household's decisions regarding solid waste; a model to explain the firm's decisions regarding household waste. Part 4 The residential and commercial demand equations - some econometric issues: specifications of the empirical model; stacking and aggregating the data; method of estimation. Part 5 A description of the data and details of the empirical model: data related to waste quantities and prices of SWS; the funding of SWS in non-user fee communities; inconsistancies within the quantity data; data related to community characteristics and regional prices; details of the empirical model. Part 6 How waste quantities respond to a user fee for SWS: results of the GLS estimation. Part 7 Tests and respecifications of the empirical model: an annual version of the generalized least squares (GLS) model; a Hausman test for endogeneity of the user fee variables; a test for constant slope coefficients. Part 8 Forecasting waste quantities: forecasting the quantity of residential waste; estimating the welfare gain from a residential user fee; forecasting the quantity of commercial waste; forecasting the sum of residential and commercial waste.