Garbage and recycling with endogenous local policy

This paper estimates the impact of garbage fees and curbside recycling prog rams on garbage and recycling amounts. Without correction for endogenous po licy, a price per bag of garbage has a negative effect on garbage and a pos itive cross-price effect on recycling. Correction for endogenous local poli cy increases the effect of the user fee on garbage and the effect of curbsi de recycling collection on recycling. Introducing a fee of $1 per hag is es timated to reduce garbage by 412 pounds per person per year (44%), but to i ncrease recycling by only 30 pounds per person per year. (C) 2000 Academic Press.