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The aim of this study is to explore the factors that influence the material footprint (MF), which represents the total amount of raw materials used in the production of goods and services. MF provides a more comprehensive measure of resource use across supply chains, capturing aspects of environmental degradation not addressed by conventional indicators. MF serves as a measure of material consumption across global supply-chain networks that connect production and consumption. Moreover, reducing the MF can promote efficient resource use and encourage sustainable production and consumption patterns. In this study, we explore what socioeconomic determinants affect MF in the European Union. We have utilized a dataset comprising observations from unbalanced panel data of 27 European countries spanning the period from 2000 to 2021. The main findings suggest that GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita, the industry share, fertility rate, and taxes contribute to an increase in MF, while the degree of urbanization, research and development (R&D), and resource productivity rate reduce MF. Our findings have policy relevance within the EU’s sustainability goals, providing insights into the factors that can drive resource efficiency as outlined in the Circular Economy (CE) Action Plan.

In the discourse of development economics, it is argued that the quality of governance can play a central role for the economic growth. Literature in this area is extensive and many scholars have deeply investigated the importance of governance to explain why most of the developing countries have a weak economic performance. The present work investigates the impact of governance quality on per capita GDP (gross domestic product) growth for 45 African countries using World Bank data. Governance is expressed by six different proxy indicators called World Governance Indicators (WGI). In addition to Governance Indicators, other variables such as measures of primary school enrolment, degree of openness to trade, capital, foreign direct investment (FDI), and government expenditure as the control variables are used for a relatively long period of time, 2002 to 2021. We apply Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) as econometric method to estimate our model. The findings suggest that government effectiveness, rule of law, and regulatory quality and corruption are governance measures that influence economic growth. 

Waste management policies aim to divert waste from lower positions on the waste hierarchy such as landfill and incineration to higher positions in the hierarchy such as energy recovery and recycling. However, empirical evaluations of such policies are scarce. This study highlighted the effect of waste management policies on the amount of waste treated with landfill, incineration, energy recovery and recycling by analysing a panel dataset consisting of 14 European countries and the period 1996 to 2018. Findings from a seemingly unrelated regression model suggest that the landfill ban is associated with a decrease in landfill waste, but an increase in incineration, energy recovery and recycling waste. The landfill tax is also correlated with an increase in energy recovery waste but, in contrast, it is associated with a reduction in incineration and recycling waste. Meanwhile, the deposit refund scheme is associated with a decrease in the amount of landfill waste. Concerning the effects on total waste generated, regression results from a fixed effects model indicate that the landfill tax and the deposit refund scheme are both correlated with a reduction in the amount of waste generated. These findings contribute to the scarce academic literature evaluating waste management policies and may better inform policy makers on their longer-term implications.

Sweden has since the end of the 1990s, when the environmental objective system was adopted, had the ambitionof being an environmental frontrunner. In line with this, in 2009 the Parliament adopted the goal of achieving afossil free vehicle fleet in 2030. Replacing private car use with public transport is expected to contribute to thisgoal. In 2008, a co-operation between actors in the public transport sector was launched with support from theGovernment with the aim to double its use. Sweden however is a country with important geographical differ-ences. Much of the country is sparsely populated, especially in the north. From previous research it is well knownthat usage of public transport is dependent on population density and accessibility to employment and schools.Understanding how spatial differences influence the cost of public transport provision is therefore crucial whendiscussing if public transport is a cost-efficient way to achieve national goals for the transport sector. In thispaper, Swedish county level panel data, including variables that provide information on geographical differencesbetween the counties, have been used to estimate average marginal costs of boardings. Results show that theseare much lower in the three counties with the largest urbanized areas. In the other counties there is a variationwhich illustrates that there are a number of factors that influence the average marginal costs. In relation to policy, we find that the doubling ambition established in 2008 has not been achieved.

Greenhouse gas emissions, produced by various sectors, including transportation, are significantly impairing the environment and drive climate change. Battery electric vehicles are increasingly seen as a way to alleviate these problems, but they must be charged with electricity produced through environmentally friendly methods. This paper investigates a possible relationship between battery electric vehicles and solar photovoltaic panels using ENABLE.EU household survey data from ten European countries in autumn 2017–spring 2018. Based on the estimates from a recursive bivariate probit model, it is found that the probability that a household owns a battery electric vehicle increases significantly if said household owns solar photovoltaic panels. This suggests that a policy encouraging the home charging of battery electric vehicles using solar photovoltaic panels that includes an energy storage facility could speed up the transition to the use of these vehicles.

This paper examines convergence clubs for per capita CO2 emissions among 28 European countries intwo main activity sectors (Industry and Manufacturing) between 1970 and 2018, with a focus on theenergy sector. The method used is the Phillips-Sul log t-test using two ordering criteria to run the algorithmfor the panel countries. The first one is using the last observation and the second one uses thesample average. The results of analyses of data strongly support the existence of convergence clubs,indicating that five groups of European countries are converging to distinct steady states for theaggregate CO2 emissions. We also find evidence of convergence clubs for industry sectors whilemanufacturing sector shows clubs convergence only when we use the first criterion while in the secondcase, we find only a single steady state.

Visitors to big tourist cities are very likely heterogeneous and can be classified into different segments, for example, low and high spenders. Previous studies on visitor expenditure-based segmentation seem to have only taken into account observed heterogeneity, usually segmenting tourists based on observed characteristics. In the present study, however, the visitors to Venice, Italy, are segmented with respect to their spending into different groups based on both observed and unobserved heterogeneity using a finite mixture model. The results indicate that the visitors belong to three latent classes with respect to their expenditure. Interestingly, different variables affect expenditure differently depending on the latent class belonging. The overall conclusion is that segmenting tourists into different classes based on unobserved heterogeneity with respect to their spending is preferable and more informative than treating the visitors as one homogeneous group. The approach is also more useful for different types of policymaking.

Italy is facing high pressure to meet objectives to recycle waste and national waste management targets set by the European Union Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC; EC European Commission, 2008). However, waste collection and recycling waste costs pose major problems (addressed here) at municipal level for the Italian waste management system. The empirical literature on waste management has paid much more attention to demand-side aspects (reduction and discouragement of land disposal and promotion of recycling and recovery) than to supply-side issues such as analysis of waste management costs. This paper addresses the gap in this research field by estimating the cost function of providing waste collection and recycling services for Italian municipalities during the years 2011–2017. Specifically, we estimate cost elasticity and marginal costs to determine if there are economies of scale for recycling urban waste. Our findings suggest that increasing recycling rates would not substantially increase total costs for most of the municipalities, so recycling should be encouraged, especially for municipalities with low recycling rates. In particular, we observe that cost elasticity is higher in northern municipalities than in central and southern Italian municipalities. Our cost function exhibits economies of scale until a certain amount of recycled waste. The results provide insights into the cost structure of recycling that may lead to more efficient waste management.