Political Interventions to Reduce Single-Use Plastics (SUPs) and Price Effects: An Event Study for Austria and Germany

Single-use plastics (SUPs) impose substantial environmental costs. Following Directive (EU) 2019/904, Austria and Germany introduced producer charges and fund payments to finance clean-up. Using a high-frequency panel of retail offer spells with prices and a fixed-effects event-study design with two-way clustered standard errors, this paper estimates the extent to which these costs are passed through to consumer prices. We find clear evidence of price pass-through in Austria. Pooled Austrian SUP products are 13.01 index points more expensive than non-SUP controls within twelve months (DiD(12m); p<0.001) and 19.42 points over the full post-policy period (p<0.001). At the product level, highly taxed balloons exhibit strong and persistent effects (DiD(12m)=13.43, p=0.007; Full DiD=19.96, p<0.001). For plastic to-go cups, the twelve-month estimate is negative but statistically insignificant (DiD(12m)=-22.73, p=0.096), while the full-period estimate is positive and likewise insignificant. In Germany, where the Single-Use Plastics Fund took effect in 2024, the post-policy window is short and estimates are not statistically significant; these results are therefore interpreted as descriptive rather than causal. As the data contain prices but not quantities, the analysis speaks to price incidence on consumers and producers, not to changes in consumption or litter.