Introduction

The ‘economics of waste’ is a field of environmental economics which features a growing interest in theoretical analyses dealing with the design of optimal policy packages in first-best and second-best situations, and in the presence of non-competitive market scenarios, illegal market rents and dynamic issues. The increasing scarcity of land and the consequential change in policy, focused first on waste disposal and recovery and then on waste production, have also generated a need for empirical analyses providing evidence on policy effectiveness, the relevance of specifi c regional features and the impact of a comprehensive set of socio-economic drivers. Numerous microeconomic oriented studies and macroeconomic analyses, in streams linked to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature, have emerged during the past years, broadening the ‘management’ focus to include wider economic considerations, and complementing the historically stronger literature on the valuation of waste related externalities, with the aim of offering robust food for thought for central and decentralized policy makers. This book is a collection of theoretical and empirical chapters addressing waste management and waste disposal issues and embedding them in spatial, systemic and trade related frameworks. The collection is policy oriented. It includes heterodox economic, socio-economic and political sciences perspectives in order to increase the value for policy making, to provide an understanding of real world phenomena and to increase the book’s readership. Although some contributions contain applications from the economics toolkit, the approach is always heterodox in kind, and diversified in its methodology. Complementarities between techniques and views on waste management issues are sought.