Competition and municipal waste management expenditure: Evidence from the Czech Republic Olomouc Region

Abstract

Today, the increasing importance of waste management and the question of its efficiency is a broadly discussed topic, both on the theoretical and practical level. The present paper provides the results of a comprehensive analysis of the competitiveness of the environment with regard to waste management in the Czech Republic, Olomouc Region, while focusing on its effects on municipal waste management expenditure. The main goal of the paper is to examine and evaluate the impact of the competitiveness of the environment on cost-effectiveness of municipal waste management expenditure by using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and a competition index of our own design. We compare expenditure per capita for several municipality size groups. Moreover, the data have also been analysed separately for the each of the five districts of the Olomouc Region in order to identify whether there are any significant differences among the districts within the region. The analysed period covers 5 years - from 2010 to 2014 - and the sample consists of all 399 municipalities of the Olomouc Region. The HHI results confirm that the competitive environment has a significant impact on municipal expenditure, but our competition index results show impact of competition as ambiguous.