The Welfare Effects of Environmental Taxation on a Green Market Where Consumers Emit a Pollutant

This paper examines the welfare impact of emission taxes and subsidies in a green market where consumers emit a pollutant through their usage of products produced by duopolists. For this purpose, we employ a discrete?Ccontinuous model including both consumer choice and usage of an environmentally differentiated product in a utility-consistent framework. The findings indicate that an emission tax is always welfare dominant over a subsidy on consumer purchases of the clean product because of its contribution to a reduction in environmental damage. It does this by both inducing firms to improve the environmental qualities of their products and by constraining consumer usage of these products.     

Welfare Effects of Commodity Taxation in Cournot Oligopoly

In the context of Cournot oligopoly with possibly asymmetric costs, this paper presents necessary and sufficient conditions for a small specific tax and a small ad valorem tax to increase total surplus. The paper also shows that a shift from a small specific tax to a small ad valorem tax, leaving the tax revenue unchanged, increases the total surplus.
JEL Classification Numbers: D43, H21, L13.     

Regional versus Multilateral Trade Liberalization,Environmental Taxation,and Welfare

The paper considers trade between identical countries with imperfectly competitive markets, and compares the impacts of regional and multilateral tariff reduction on strategic environmental taxation and welfare. While both forms of trade liberalization increase production and consumption in tariff‐reducing countries, regionalism also reduces production in a non‐participating country and may decrease its consumption. Consequently, regionalism and multilateralism change pollution tax and welfare in the tariff‐reducing countries in similar ways when pollution is local, but in dissimilar ways for global pollution. When pollution is global, regionalism is likely to be preferred to multilateralism for the establishment of free trade among countries.     

公益、救济性捐赠的税收政策分析与税收筹划初探

本文在分析公益、救济性捐赠的税收政策的基础上,提出了纳税人应充分运用现代税收优惠政策,对其捐赠行为进行税收筹划,使纳税人在完成公益善举的同时,又能减轻税负.     

Reconsidering the Marginal Welfare Cost of Taxation*

A model with sticky wage rates and involuntary unemployment is used to compute the marginal cost of taxation, and these estimates are compared with those obtained from the conventional price-clearing equilibrium model. Important determinants of the marginal cost estimates are the response of sticky wages to a tax increase, the elasticity of demand for labour, and the unemployment gap. By contrast, the conventional model focuses on the elasticity of labour supply. The different models have different implications for efficient tax design. However, the new model generally agrees with the conventional model regarding significant efficiency costs of higher taxation.     

On Environmental Taxation under Uncertain Environmental Damage

This paper addresses optimal taxation, when therelationship between the consumption of a`dirty' good and the resulting environmentaldamage is uncertain and treated as a randomvariable by policy makers. The main purpose isto analyze how increased uncertainty, measuredas a mean preserving increase in the spread ofthis random variable, affects the optimalcommodity tax on the dirty consumption good. Incase the only task of government is to correctthe environmental externality, and if thepreferences are characterized by nondecreasingabsolute risk aversion, we find that thecommodity tax on the dirty consumption goodincreases in response to additionaluncertainty. If, on the other hand, thegovernment provides a public good and uses alump-sum tax in addition to the commodity tax,it is possible that the commodity tax decreasesas a response to additional uncertainty, evenif the preferences are characterized bynondecreasing absolute risk aversion. A similarresult emerges, although for different reasons,if the lump-sum tax is replaced by a laborincome tax.     

略论我国建立环境税制的负面影响及政策建议

环境税作为环境保护的有效政策工具，已被许多发达国家所采用．但是，环境税也有其负面影响。本文基于我国经济发展实际情况．主要分析我国建立环境税制对公众心理税负、对居民收入分配以及对国家和企业竞争力等方面可能产生的负面影响，借鉴国际经验．结合我国实际．提出解决的政策建议。     

环境成本的内部化与环境税制变迁

本文分析了环境成本产生的经济学根源,进而分析了环境成本内部化的途径.研究发现,政府环境税收政策的实施对企业利润的影响决定了环境成本内部化的途径.在完善的环境税制下,征收环境税可以促使污染企业外部成本内部化,因而环境税制是一种有效的环境经济政策.中国还没有开征专门的环境税,目前的税制在保护环境上发挥的作用不明显,有必要开征专门的环境税.本文运用制度变迁理论探讨了中国环境税制变迁的路径.     

Carbon Taxation, Fuel Substitution and Welfare in Australia

This paper examines the potential role for fuel substitution in electricity production in reducing carbon dioxide emissions over a ten-year time horizon. This is achieved by adding fuel substitution to output changes resulting from demand responses arising from a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. A time profile of adjustments is developed. The tax required for Australia to meet a 20 per cent reduction in emissions from 1993 levels is calculated and effects on inequality and social welfare are examined. The paper also examines the potential effect of a subsidy towards the use of low-emission fuels, financed from the carbon tax. A subsidy produces an improvement in emissions abatement and a lower tax required to reach the emissions target.     

环境成本的内部化与环境税制变迁

本文分析了环境成本产生的经济学根源,进而分析了环境成本内部化的途径。研究发现,政府环境税收政策的实施对企业利润的影响决定了环境成本内部化的途径。在完善的环境税制下,征收环境税可以促使污染企业外部成本内部化,因而环境税制是一种有效的环境经济政策。中国还没有开征专门的环境税,目前的税制在保护环境上发挥的作用不明显,有必要开征专门的环境税。本文运用制度变迁理论探讨了中国环境税制变迁的路径。     

Measuring Welfare Changes and the Excess Burden of Taxation*

This paper examines methods used to evaluate the welfare effects of tax changes, with emphasis on the measurement problems involved. Welfare changes and excess burdens are defined, along with approximations. Aggregate measures, using a social welfare function, are examined. The special case of income taxation is then examined, leading to discussion of the marginal welfare cost of taxation and the marginal cost of funds. The measurement methods examined include the use and estimation of direct and indirect utility functions, along with the algebraic and numerical integration from estimated Marshallian demand functions to the compensated demands. The use of equivalent incomes to examine tax changes, using unit record data from household budget surveys, is then discussed.     

The Welfare Effects of Incentive Schemes

This paper computes the change in welfare associated with the introduction of incentives. We calculate by how much the welfare gains of increased output due to incentives outweigh workers' disutility from increased effort. We accomplish this by studying the use of incentives by a firm in the check-clearing industry. Using this firm's production records, we model and estimate the worker's dynamic effort decision problem. We find that the firm's incentive scheme has a large effect on productivity, raising it by 12% over the sample period for the average worker. Using our parameter estimates, we show that the cost of increased effort due to incentives is equal to the dollar value of a 5% rise in productivity. Welfare is measured as the output produced minus the cost of effort; hence, the net increase in the average worker's welfare due to the introduction of the firm's bonus plan is 7%. Under a first-best scheme, we find that the net increase in welfare is 9%.     

Efficient Environmental Taxation Under Worker-Firm Bargaining

We study an economy with free firm entry and unemployment due to firm-worker bargaining over each firm's surplus, and where firms cause pollution that can be reduced by initial investments. An uncompensated increase in the pollution tax reduces pollution but increases unemployment, implying a tradeoff between the two. When tax revenues are used to subsidize either firms' hiring or investments, employment may also increase, creating a double dividend from the pollution tax. A pollution tax increase used to subsidize current employment is always less effective than a hiring subsidy, and is totally ineffective when subsidies equal pollution tax revenues for each individual firm. We show that the (hypothetical) pollution tax implementing the first-best solution exceeds the Pigouvian tax. The second-best tax exceeds this first-best tax when we have a double dividend, and is below it when we do not.     

市场结构、环境税与福利效应分析

运用短期局部均衡分析方法研究完全竞争市场和垄断市场条件下环境税对社会福利的影响.结果显示:在完全竞争市场条件下,对企业征收环境税可以增进社会福利.而在垄断市场条件下,环境税的福利效应具有不确定性,这取决于垄断造成的扭曲程度.如果垄断造成的扭曲较小,环境税仍然可以提高社会福利.但无论是增进抑或降低社会福利,对垄断企业征收环境税都不可能实现最优化,因为环境税在矫正污染外部性的同时,垄断造成产量水平下降导致福利损失增加,所以只能追求一个次优的结果,次优环境税低于完全竞争条件下的标准环境税.     

完善我国环境税收制度的思考

20世纪40年代以来,伴随着经济迅猛发展而来的是对自然资源的无限制消耗和惊人的损失浪费,并由此带来了自然灾害频繁、生态失衡和环境恶化等问题,这些都严重影响了生态、经济和社会的均衡持续发展。从20世纪70年代起,日趋严重的全球性生态环境问题越来越引起各国政府和理论界的高度关注。在经济和社会发展的同时,经济目标、社会目标和生态目标的协调发展已为世界各国所共识。     

The Environmental Paradox of the Welfare State: The Dynamics of Sustainability

Thus far, there has been a reluctance to instigate a dialogue and engage with the tensions between two literatures with significant insights for each other. The first is the literature on the fiscal sustainability of welfare states, which is invariably predicated upon future growth primarily to manage demographic changes. The second is the post-growth literature, which has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years due to an environmental critique of economic growth. Both literatures contain implications for the analysis of welfare state sustainability. The primary contribution of this paper will be to explore the intractability of the tensions between these discourses and the difficulty of mapping out a progressive policy direction in the twenty-first century which meets both our environmental and social sensibilities. It is claimed that in the post-industrial world the fiscal sustainability of welfare capitalism is dependent upon public expenditure financed indirectly an environmentally unsustainable growth dynamic, but that ironically any conflagration of public welfare programmes is likely to be counter-productive as the welfare state is able to promote de-carbonisation strategies and notions of the public good as well as promoting monetarily and ecologically efficient public welfare services.     

The Welfare Effects of Differential Tariff Rates

This paper considers a two-country, three-good economy in which one country imposes tariffs on import goods at a uniform rate, while the other country engages in free trade. In such an economy, we examine the welfare effects of changing tariff rates toward differential tariffs from uniform tariffs.     

论我国环境税收体系的重构

我国现行的环境保护的税、费措施存在许多不足:排污收费的随意性很大,不能充分发挥保护环境的作用,缺乏专门系统的环境保护税,环境保护的目的难以实现。为此,必须完善现行的环境保护税收措施,开征环境保护税,以重构我国的环境税收体系,加强对环境的保护,促进经济与环境的协调发展。     

The Macroeconomic Effects of Taxation in a Federal Europe

The signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 has created a dilemma for fiscal policy at both a theoretical and a policy level. The conflict between the increasingly important stabilising role for fiscal policy post-Maastricht and the pursuit of fiscal harmonisation requires a re-examination of the theoretical framework within which policy discussion should take place. Orthodox tax incidence theory cannot adequately analyse the macroeconomic effects of taxation and the paper proposes an alternative post-Keynesian approach based on the tax and business cycle theories of Kalecki. To illustrate the applicability of a Kaleckian approach to taxation in a Federal system, the paper presents a discussion of the macroeconomic effects of State and local taxation in the US. It is also shown to be necessary to study the structure of State government receipts, the expenditure functions of State governments, the State government budget stance and the nature of intergovernmental relations in order to identify macroeconomic effects.     

Trade Structure, Transboundary Pollution and Multilateral Trade Liberalization: The Effects on Environmental Taxes and Welfare

This paper considers a trade situation where the production activities of potentially heterogeneous countries generate pollution which can cross borders and harm the well-being of all the countries involved. In each of those countries the policy maker levies pollution taxes on the polluting firms and a tariff on imports in order to correct that distortion. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the effect of a reduction in the tariff on equilibrium pollution taxes and welfare. The existing literature has investigated this problem for trade between two identical countries. This paper analyzes the problem in the more realistic context where countries are not necessarily identical and trade can be multilateral. It becomes possible to show what bias is introduced when those two realities are neglected. I find that a tariff reduction can actually lower output; it can also lower welfare even if pollution is purely local.