Swiss Economist Receives Heinz König Young Scholar Award Including EUR 5,000 Endowment

Stefano Carattini from the Haute Ecole de Gestion de Genève, Switzerland, is the 2015 recipient of the Heinz König Young Scholar Award of the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). The jury's decision indicates their recognition of the excellent research carried out by Carattini into the effect of a pay-per-bag tax on household waste on the produced amount of waste. By looking at the influence of such taxation on the behaviour of households and at the acceptability of such measures, Carattini has made an important contribution to the debate on the impact of fiscal policy on tackling environmental issues and promoting a sustainable economy.

The annual "Heinz König Young Scholar Award" comes with prize money of EUR 5,000. The recipient is also given the opportunity to spend an extended research stay at ZEW. This year's award was sponsored by Fuchs Petrolub SE, a member of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice. The award was presented to Carattini by ZEW President Professor Clemens Fuest and Fuchs Petrolub representative Dagmar Steinert.

In industrialised countries, waste disposal is associated with substantial costs. These costs are distributed across the whole society to the effect that every citizen bears them to the same extent. A further issue is that of dwindling supplies of raw materials and the resulting increase in costs. Suitable pricing signals might be useful to encourage more efficient use and recycling of expensive raw materials.

Stefano Carattini's award-winning paper provides empirical evidence showing that the implementation of a tax per bag of waste results in a 40 per cent reduction in the amount of waste produced per head in households. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Swiss households subject to this direct, amount-dependent form of taxation perceived it as fairer and more effective than households in communities that were not subject to the tax (households in different Swiss municipalities).

The Heinz König Young Scholar Award is named after the late founding director of ZEW, Professor Heinz König, who died in 2002. The award recognises outstanding empirical research carried out by up-and-coming economists. In keeping with Heinz König's ideas, the objective of the award is to promote talented economists in the early stages of their careers instead of adding yet another award to the vast number of prizes for established researchers.

The Heinz König Young Scholar Award was presented at the 2015 ZEW Summer Workshop. This year, the workshop focused on advanced empirical methods in innovation and environmental economics, in particular in the area of policy and programme evaluation. The objective of the workshop is to train up-and-coming researchers.

This year, from the huge number of applications submitted, 16 researchers were selected and subsequently invited to the Summer Workshop, where they had the opportunity to present and discuss their papers both with other young researchers and with renowned economists. These included Dirk Czarnitzki from the Catholic University of Leuven, Antoine Dechezleprêtre from the London School of Economics, and Mark J. Roberts from the Pennsylvania State University. Czarnitzki, Dechezleprêtre and Roberts also held special lectures for the participants of the ZEW Summer Workshop.

For further information please contact

Dr. Sascha Rexhäuser, Phone +49/621/1235-213, E-mail rexhaeuser@zew.de