# name
Does It Take More Than One Village? The Effect of Inter-Municipal Cooperation on Waste Separation

# metadata.dc.description.abstract[].value
Municipalities increasingly cooperate with one another to improve their public services. In this study, we estimate the causal effect of Inter-Municipal Cooperation (IMC) on the environmental performance of waste collection in Catalonia. Using a difference-indifferences framework, we find that municipalities moving into IMC decrease nonseparated waste per capita and increase the share of waste separation. However, when taking into account potential selection into treatment, a causal effect is present only in a sub-period after a strong hike in the landfill tax, and particularly for municipalities switching after this tax hike. This points to IMC’s potential to use technical capability and economies of scale for a more pronounced and rapid reaction, enhancing the effectiveness of higher-level policy. In contrast, absent the landfill tax, IMC seems to have offered limited improvement in environmental performance, suggesting at most a secondary role for internalization of local environmental spillovers..

# metadata.dc.publisher[].value
Universitat de Barcelona. Facultat d'Economia i Empresa

# metadata.dc.rights[].value
cc-by-nc-nd, (c) Bel i Queralt et al., 2025

# metadata.dc.source[].value
Documents de treball (Institut de Recerca en Economia Aplicada Regional i Pública (IREA))

# metadata.dc.title[].value
Does It Take More Than One Village? The Effect of Inter-Municipal Cooperation on Waste Separation