Pre-doctoral researcher in industrial and environmental economics

This project concerns the microeconomic analysis of cooperation incentives along the entire life cycle of goods in a circular economy. Transition towards a more circular economy is seen by policy makers around the world as a key strategy to achieve the long term climate policy targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Circular economy strategies require however new ways of cooperation among stakeholders (virgin material companies, commodity traders, producers, retailers, consumers, waste handlers, repair shops, remanufacturers, recyclers, …) in the supply chain. This project’s objective is to investigating how market structure (i.e. the competitive nature of the market in the sense of vertical and horizontal integration) and strategic cooperation incentives interact. Potential sources of market failures (i.e. situations when market outcomes do not coincide with the optimal outcome for society because of non-competitive behavior and environmental externalities for example) will be identified allowing to make recommendations for corrective policies. The project will focus in particular on market structure, the switch towards servitisation, and policy instruments (and the interaction and trade-offs between them) as mediators of cooperation incentives. The theoretical results will be applied in an integrative case study zooming in on repair and maintenance aftermarkets for durable goods. These activities increase the lifetime and environmental performance of goods and are therefore crucially important in the transition towards a more circular economy. Methodologically, the analysis will combine analytical, game theoretic micro economic models (UCLouvain expertise) with numerical partial equilibrium models (KU Leuven expertise) of interconnected markets.