IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cap/wpaper/022017.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure: A comparative analysis of property rights in solid waste

Author

Listed:
  • Giuseppe Danese

    (Católica Porto Business School – CEGE – Universidade Católica Portuguesa)

Abstract

Previous literature has studied waste picking as an economic, social and environmental phenomenon of great importance in countries characterized by ineffective waste collection and recycling programs. The legal foundations of waste picking have, however, received little scholarly attention. Surveys conducted with waste pickers from 5 cities (Bogotá, Pune, Belo Horizonte, Durban, Nakuru) find that existing, and often hostile, regulations and competition from new entrants are key concerns for the waste pickers. In this paper, I argue that any system of legal rules that tries to exclude the waste pickers from the waste value chain results in high transaction costs and risks further aggravating existing social injustices. Several inclusive property right regimes are conceivable, from waste picker ownership of waste to a res nullius (nobody’s property) regime complemented by a right of first possession. Res nullius creates incentives for the stakeholders of waste to specialize in different segments of the collection and recycling chain. Possible drawbacks of this regime are dissipating rents because of open access to waste.

Suggested Citation

  • Giuseppe Danese, 2017. "One man’s trash is another man’s treasure: A comparative analysis of property rights in solid waste," Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) 02, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    • Handle: RePEc:cap:wpaper:022017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.feg.porto.ucp.pt/docentes/repec/WP/022017_Danese_One_mans_trash.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yoram Barzel, 1997. "Measurement Cost and the Organization of Markets," Chapters, in: Svetozar Pejovich (ed.), The Economic Foundations of Property Rights, chapter 13, pages 171-192, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Sicular, Daniel T., 1991. "Pockets of peasants in Indonesian cities: The case of scavengers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 137-161.
    3. R. H. Coase, 2013. "The Problem of Social Cost," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(4), pages 837-877.
    4. Galiani, Sebastian & Meléndez, Marcela & Ahumada, Camila Navajas, 2017. "On the effect of the costs of operating formally: New experimental evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 143-157.
    5. Mark Hansley Chua, 2017. "A Coasian perspective on informal rights assignment among waste pickers in the Philippines," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(13), pages 3071-3084, October.
    6. Barzel,Yoram, 1997. "Economic Analysis of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521597135, February.
    7. Lueck, Dean, 1995. "The Rule of First Possession and the Design of the Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 393-436, October.
    8. Allen, Douglas W., 2017. "Property as sequential exchange: definition and language issues," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(4), pages 785-792, December.
    9. Altaf, Mir Anjum & Deshazo, J. R., 1996. "Household demand for improved solid waste management: A case study of Gujranwala, Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 857-868, May.
    10. James Robinson, 2016. "La miseria en Colombia," Revista Desarrollo y Sociedad, Universidad de los Andes,Facultad de Economía, CEDE, vol. 76, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benito Arruñada, 2012. "Property as an economic concept: reconciling legal and economic conceptions of property rights in a Coasean framework," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 59(2), pages 121-144, July.
    2. Lueck, Dean & Miceli, Thomas J., 2007. "Property Law," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 183-257, Elsevier.
      • Dean Lueck & Thomas J. Miceli, 2004. "Property Law," Working papers 2004-04, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    3. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 227-253, April.
    4. Gary D. Libecap & Dean Lueck, 2009. "The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions," NBER Working Papers 14942, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Coggan, Anthea & Whitten, Stuart M. & Bennett, Jeff, 2010. "Influences of transaction costs in environmental policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1777-1784, July.
    6. Kirsten Foss & Nicolai Foss, 2001. "Assets, Attributes and Ownership," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 19-37.
    7. Harris,Colin & Cai,Meina & Murtazashvili,Ilia & Murtazashvili,Jennifer Brick, 2020. "The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108969055, October.
    8. Arruñada, Benito, 2017. "Property as sequential exchange: the forgotten limits of private contract," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(4), pages 753-783, December.
    9. Gary D. Libecap & Dean Lueck, 2009. "The Demarcation of Land and the Role of Coordinating Institutions," ICER Working Papers 14-2009, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    10. Caunetto, Mariela Meira & de Souza, José Paulo & Schiavi, Sandra Mara de Alencar, 2024. "Transactions in Paraná’s dairy AGS: a study based on transaction and measurement costs," Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural (RESR), Sociedade Brasileira de Economia e Sociologia Rural, vol. 62(1), January.
    11. Jongwook Kim & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2002. "Resource-based and property rights perspectives on value creation: the case of oil field unitization," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 225-245.
    12. Ennio E. Piano & Louis Rouanet, 2020. "Economic calculation and the organization of markets," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 33(3), pages 331-348, September.
    13. Whitten, Stuart M. & Salzman, James & Shelton, Dave & Procter, Wendy, 2003. "Markets for ecosystem services: Applying the concepts," 2003 Conference (47th), February 12-14, 2003, Fremantle, Australia 58269, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    14. Rossi, Enrico, 2020. "Reconsidering the dual nature of property rights: personal property and capital in the law and economics of property rights," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 105840, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Yun-chien Chang, 2015. "An economic and comparative analysis of specificatio (the accession doctrine)," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 225-243, April.
    16. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    17. Armelle Mazé & Claude Ménard, 2010. "Private ordering, collective action, and the self-enforcing range of contracts," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 131-153, February.
    18. Mueller, Bernardo, 2018. "Property Rights Implications for the Brazilian Forest Code," Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural (RESR), Sociedade Brasileira de Economia e Sociologia Rural, vol. 56(2), January.
    19. Christophe Depres & Gilles Grolleau & Naoufel Mzoughi, 2008. "Contracting for Environmental Property Rights: The Case of Vittel," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 75(299), pages 412-434, August.
    20. Martina Eckardt & Wolfgang Kerber, 2024. "Property rights theory, bundles of rights on IoT data, and the EU Data Act," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 113-143, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    property rights; solid waste; waste pickers; informal economy; res nullius;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K11 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Property Law
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cap:wpaper:022017. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ricardo Goncalves (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feucppt.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.