Structural Determinants of Landfill Dependency in Emerging and Transition European Economies: A Fixed-Effects Panel Analysis

Despite a consolidated European policy framework, the transition toward a circular economy (CE) yields heterogeneous outcomes across countries, and the role of digital capacity remains contested. This paper examines the structural determinants of landfill dependency—a synthetic indicator of circular performance—for a panel of nine emerging and transition European economies (Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia) from 2015 to 2023 (n = 80). We estimate fixed-effects (FE) and correlated random-effects (CRE/Mundlak) panel models, with pooled OLS as a benchmark, and base inference on a wild cluster bootstrap appropriate for the small number of countries; we use an unsupervised classification built on predictor-side variables only as a descriptive typology. Landfill dependency is found to be overwhelmingly a between-country, structural phenomenon: the large majority of the variation lies across countries and is associated with the level of economic development, whereas within countries over 2015–2023 there is no robust association with waste generation, income, urbanization, or digitalization (a suggestive negative link with unemployment is the exception). Internet penetration—a broad proxy for digital development, not a direct measure of Big Data Analytics—shows no detectable within-country effect and, by an equivalence test, is statistically indistinguishable from zero. The results reposition digitalization as a marker of structural development rather than a direct lever of circular performance, and locate Albania within a stable high-landfill, low-income structural regime.