Plastic Turkey: International Impacts of China's Waste Import Ban (with Deniz Atalar and Swati Dhingra)
07 October 2025 5:45 pm CEST
Banu Demir (Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford) presents her paper (jointly with Deniz Atalar and Swati Dhingra) in the Vienna International Economics Seminar (VIES) series
In cooperation with CEU, FIW, Universität Wien, WIFO, WIIW and WU.
Venue
University of Vienna at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Statistics
Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1
1090 Vienna
3rd floor, VGSE Seminar Room
Description
Global plastic production has increased dramatically over recent decades, and it has generated large volumes of plastic waste. High-income countries reduce their plastic waste burden by exporting it to developing countries. China has been a major importer of plastic waste since its integration with the global economy. But following environmental concerns over waste disposal and processing, China banned key plastic waste imports in 2017. This paper shows that China’s policy led to a dramatic diversion of trade that had repercussions for emerging markets across the world. Turkey became a major importer of plastic waste from more advanced economies. Importers in Turkey got better access to plastic waste that could be recycled as inputs in production. But imports of plastic waste displaced domestic waste in production and we show that firms in Turkey that generated plastic waste became more likely to mismanage it, including through burning or dumping in water bodies. Emissions from waste management increased in Turkish regions that were more specialised in production of the waste products banned by China. While importing firms increased output, their gains were not enough to undo the losses faced by domestic waste suppliers. The policy led to economic losses and more waste emissions in Turkey, but it offered savings in emissions from reduced use of virgin resources in plastic production. We model the channels of recycling and environmental degradation in a gravity model of trade and the environment to quantify the global spillovers of environmental externalities and the welfare impacts of China’s import ban.
Speaker
Banu Demir is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow at Brasenose College. I also have a part-time appointment as Professor of Applied Regional Economics at Erasmus School of Economics. I am a research affiliate of CEPR (ITR), and an affiliate of the CESifo Research Network in Munich.
Registration
Participants are requested to register in advance with Julia Hnidek
The VIES seminar is dedicated to frontier research in international economics and features presentations by renowned international scholars.
The VIES is a joint initiative of CEU, FIW, Universität Wien, WIFO, WIIW and WU.