Recycling Rates of Municipal Waste Across European Union Member States

This thesis examines the relationship between environmental fiscal instruments, institutional waste-pricing mechanisms, and municipal recycling performance across European countries within the framework of EU waste policy. Using panel data for 17 countries over 2016–2022, the analysis applies a correlated random effects (Mundlak) model alongside pooled OLS, fixed effects, and random effects estimators to account for cross-country heterogeneity. The results show that broad environmental taxation is not systematically associated with higher recycling rates, while pollution and resource taxes display weak and unstable effects. Pay-As-You-Throw (PAYT) systems show a generally positive but statistically limited association with recycling performance. Overall, the findings suggest that waste-specific pricing mechanisms and institutional factors may play a more relevant role than broad fiscal instruments in shaping recycling outcomes.