Bel i Queralt, Germà, 1963-Bühler, Joël2025-02-242025-02-242025https://hdl.handle.net/2445/219157Municipalities 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..53 p.application/pdfengcc-by-nc-nd, (c) Bel i Queralt et al., 2025http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/Cooperació interterritorialReciclatge de residusGestió ambientalInterstate cooperationWaste recyclingEnvironmental managementinfo:eu-repo/semantics/workingPaperinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess