Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T08:12:18.498Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

LIFE CYCLE OF PRODUCTS AND CYCLES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 March 2010

Jean De Beir
Affiliation:
EPEE, University Evry-Val-d'Essonne
Mouez Fodha*
Affiliation:
Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne and Paris School of Economics
Francesco Magris
Affiliation:
EPEE, University Evry-Val d'Essonne
*
Address correspondence to: Mouez Fodha, Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, Universié Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, Maison des Sciences Economique, 106–112 Bld de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris Cedex, France; e-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the development of waste recycling activities can be a source of economic fluctuations. We assume that the recycling sector has four fundamental characteristics. (i) The production factors are restricted by the production of the last period. (ii) These production factors are waste for which the price determination is noncompetitive. (iii) The sector produces a recycled good, which is a perfect substitute for the primary good. (iv) It reduces the waste stream. We consider the simplest economy, with an infinitely lived agent and a life-cycle hypothesis for the goods. We show that the equilibrium is unique and is always determinate. In spite of the lack of indeterminacy, however, our economy can display cyclical behavior, depending on some usual conditions on parameters. Namely, the steady state may undergo a flip bifurcation or a Hopf bifurcation.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Boldrin, M. and Rustichini, A. (1994) Growth and indeterminacy in dynamic models with externalities. Econometrica 62, 323343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choe, C. and Fraser, I.M. (1999) An economic analysis of household waste management. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 38, 234246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dasgupta, P.S. and Heal, G. (1979) Economic Theory of Exhaustible Resources. Cambridge, UK: James Nibset and Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fullerton, D. and Kinnaman, T.C. (1995) Garbage, recycling, and illicit burning or dumping. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 29, 7891.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fullerton, D. and Wu, W. (1998) Policies for green design. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 36, 131148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaskins, D.W. (1974) Alcoa revisited: Welfare implications of a secondhand market. Journal of Economic Theory 7, 254271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grandmont, J.M. (2008) Nonlinear difference equations, bifurcations and chaos: An introduction. Research in Economics 62, 122177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, D. (1999) Recycling and market power: A more general model and re-evaluation of the evidence. International Journal of Industrial Organization 17, 5980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helpman, E. and Krugman, P.R. (1985) Market Structure and Foreign Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Keeler, A.G. and Renkow, M. (1994) Haul trash or haul ash: Energy recovery as a component of local solid waste management. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 27, 205217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lusky, R. (1976) A model of recycling and pollution control. Canadian Journal of Economics 9, 91101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mäler, K.G. (1974) Environmental Economics: A Theoretical Inquiry. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, R.E. (1982) Monopoly power and the recycling of raw materials. Journal of Industrial Economics 30, 104419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, K. and Walls, M. (1997) Optimal policies for solid waste disposal: Taxes, subsidies and standards. Journal of Public Economics 65, 193205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, P.A. (1954) The transfer problem and transport cost: II. Analysis of effects of trade impediments. Economic Journal 64, 264289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seegmuller, T. and Verchère, A. (2007) A note on indeterminacy in overlapping generations economies with environment and endogenous labor supply. Macroeconomic Dynamics 11, 423429.Google Scholar
Suslow, V.Y. (1986) Estimating monopoly behavior with competitive recycling: An application to Alcoa. Rand Journal of Economics 17, 389403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swan, P.L. (1980) Alcoa: The influence of recycling on monopoly power. Journal of Political Economy 88, 7699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar