2. The empirical literature on unit-based pricing elasticities
To the best of our knowledge, the first study to calculate empirically the elasticity of the price of
waste upon waste quantities was Wertz (1976). The estimation, which compared the quantities of
waste for San Francisco, where a fee is charged on the number of containers put out, and the
amount of waste for a subset of cities without such a fee, gave a negative elasticity of -0.15.
Drawing on yearly municipal data, Skumatz and Breckinridge (1990) estimated an elasticity of -
0.14 for Seattle (Washington) where a bin system is also employed. By simply comparing waste
before and after the introduction of a bag-based UBP system in Perkasie (Pennsylvania) and Ilion
(New York), Morris and Byrd (1990) found elasticities of -0.26 and -0.22. Finally, Jenkins (1993)
estimated an elasticity of -0.12 for residential sector waste using pooled time series data for nine
US communities than those found for household data. Strathman et al. (1995, p. 71) suggest that measurement
errors in the household survey might explain this difference.
Hong et al. (1993) evaluated the situation in Portland (Oregon) drawing on a large sample
of households. Modeling the recycling and garbage collection services dependently, they showed
that a disposal fee did not reduce the demand for solid waste substantially. Their price elasticity
estimation was -0.03.3 Interestingly, Strathman et al. (1995) also evaluated the situation in
Portland, reporting a considerably higher price elasticity of -0.45 when using municipal and
district data. As such, it would appear that municipal data gives higher price elasticity estimates