Recycling vs Mining : competition for market shares, collusion for market power -Recyclage vs Extraction minière: concurrence pour les parts de marché, collusion pour le pouvoir de marché

As an alternative to the production of virgin materials, recycling brings competition in amarket dominated by an oligopoly of mining rms. Herein we investigate how recyclersaect the supply of materials in terms of market share and market power. An oligopoly ofnon-cooperative rms takes decisions about the level of extraction, knowing that this willaect the competition capacity of a fringe of competitive recyclers in the future. Hence,the mining rms are considered as leaders, and the market is completed by recyclersbeing considered as followers. The competition between mining rms as well as between the two sectors is described in a Cournot-Stackelberg model. We show the positive eectdepending on the small number of mining rms and their aggregated market share andprove that a technology threshold is required to allow recyclers to enter the market andcompete. Furthermore, we highlight that a signicant switch in market shares and adecrease in the market power only arise when the levels of the recycling technology andthe availability of scrap are both at a high level, while they vary a lot among countriesand materials.