2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Economics analysis for Extended Producer Responsibility and monitoring for firms

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23730260
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Applied economics
Research Institution	Kwansei Gakuin University
Principal Investigator	INO Hiroaki 関西学院大学, 経済学部, 准教授 (30546776)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	環境経済学 / 循環型社会 / 拡大生産者責任 / 産業組織論
Research Abstract	This research discusses the basis of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) from the perspective of economic theory by constructing a model that includes both disposal and recycling activities and, furthermore, by explicitly considering the government's monitoring cost in preventing firms from disposing of collected residuals illegally. In the identified optimal policy, the government should use only the policy for the firms and monitor them depending on the necessity. This result supports the concept of EPR. However, we find when policy maker deals with a low-valued recyclable, the structure of the optimal policy itself faces an important informational difficulty, which is in stark contrast to the optimal policy for a high-valued recyclable.