Environmental Tax in a Green Market

We examine the impact of an emission tax in a green market characterized by consumers’ environmental awareness and competition between firms for both environmental quality and product prices. The unique aspect of this model comes from the assumption that the cost for an increase in quality is fixed. We show that the emission tax improves welfare, thanks to a decline in pollution and despite an accentuation of product differentiation. The higher the marginal environmental damage is, the higher the optimal tax will be. The optimal tax, however, becomes lower than the marginal damage when the market is not too large. Finally, when marginal environmental damage is not too low, the optimal tax leads to a green product monopoly.     

Pollution, Capital Mobility and Tax Policies with Unemployment

In this paper we highlight aspects related to the links among unemployment, international capital mobility, and tax policies in a small open developing economy. Without international capital mobility, the joint optimal trade and environmental policies require a zero tariff and an emission tax lower than the Pigouvian tax. With international capital mobility and a capital tax (subsidy), the optimal emission tax rate is smaller (larger) compared to the rate when capital is untaxed. When both the emission tax and the capital tax/subsidy are jointly chosen optimally, then the optimal policy on capital is a lower subsidy, or even a tax, compared to the standard capital subsidy of the no pollution case.     

Optimal combination of innovation and environmental policies under technology licensing

Under what conditions will a carbon tax encourage environmental innovation? Can a regulator design an optimal environmental policy to reduce emissions and to promote clean technologies? This paper studies optimal environmental policy in the situation where a monopoly innovator develops and licenses clean production technologies to downstream polluting firms. We find that (i) a higher emission tax will encourage innovation when the burden of the tax payment in the polluters' costs and/or the price-elasticity of the demand for polluting goods are small, (ii) the innovation-inducing effects of emission tax are inversely related to the emission-reduction (Pigouvian) effects of the tax, and (iii) the social optimum can be achieved by the mix of tax and subsidy. We also show that if the policy instrument is limited to the tax, the second-best tax rate would lie between the marginal damage and the first-best rate. By performing numerical simulations, we also demonstrate that the optimal mix of the emission tax and R&D subsidy can have “double dividend” benefits.     

Trade Liberalization and Environmental Regulation on International Transportation

Incorporating pollution emissions from international transportation into a model of strategic trade and environmental policies, we investigate the effect of trade liberalization and environmental regulation on national welfare and the environment. Our model includes imperfectly competitive markets for international transportation and final products. We find that trade liberalization may reduce each country's welfare unless some level of environmental regulation on international transportation is in place. When international trade is liberalized initially, a mutual increase in the common emission tax rates may improve each country's welfare. However, when international trade is highly protected initially, imposing an emission tax may reduce welfare.     

The Timing of Environmental Policy: A Note on the Role of Product Differentiation

We examine the role that product differentiation can play in the design of environmental policy under full commitment and no commitment on the part of the environmental regulator. We consider a setting with two firms selling a differentiated product which generates pollution through emissions. Firms can reduce their emissions by undertaking abatement activities while an environmental regulator taxes emissions. The main results are: (1) When products are highly differentiated, the optimal time-consistent (no commitment) tax is always lower than the optimal pre-commitment tax. As the degree of product differentiation decreases, for relatively efficient abatement technology and high damages, the time-consistent emission tax exceeds the optimal pre-commitment one. (2) Abatement when product differentiation is extensive is higher under the time-consistent regime unless the abatement technology is extremely efficient. The same ranking applies to social welfare. However, as products become more and more similar, these results are (partially) reversed and pre-commitment could lead to both higher levels of abatement and welfare.     

Allocation of emission permits with leakage through capital markets

This paper analyses how tradable emission permits should be allocated to firms when capital is internationally mobile. When international environmental problems are attempted solved through uncoordinated policies between countries, it might be desirable for the home country to issue free emission permits in proportion to the use of capital in order to prevent leakage through international capital movements. The desirability of free emission permits will however be reduced if capital also can be employed in a domestic non-polluting sector. In this case, it may even be optimal to tax the use of capital in the polluting sector. It is also shown that it is always optimal to subsidise the use of capital in the polluting sector if the use of labour is taxed at an optimal rate. Finally, leakage does not affect the optimal domestic emission limit as long as appropriate capital subsidies and labour taxes are implementeed.     

Optimal Tax Policy under Environmental Quality Competition

This paper studies the socially optimal emission and commodity tax policy when consumers are willing to pay a price-premium for environmentally friendlier variants of a commodity vertically differentiated in environmental quality. The first-best levels of quality can be obtained by a combination of a uniform ad valorem tax and an emission tax (or a subsidy for buying green products). The first-best emission tax is higher than the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. Regardless of environmentally conscious consumers, if only one instrument is available, the second-best emission tax is equal to the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality. A uniform ad valorem tax increases welfare only if the social valuation of the positive externality associated with average environmental quality is low enough.     

Optimal environmental taxation and enforcement policy

We study the optimal environmental taxation and enforcement policy when (i) the regulator does not know the firms’ abatement costs, (ii) penalties for tax evasion are limited, and (iii) monitoring of pollution is costly. We show that the threat of being audited alter the usual firms’ incentives to over-estimate their abatement costs. In particular, depending on the firms’ abatement costs, the optimal policy may involve over or under-deterrence compared to the full information outcome. We then investigate the properties of a pollution standard. We show that this policy comes close to an environmental tax once the economic incentives of the accompanying enforcement policy are considered.     

Does a Recession Call for Less Stringent Environmental Policy? A Partial-Equilibrium Second-Best Analysis

This paper analyses second-best optimal environmental policy responses to real and financial shocks in a two-period partial equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms, an environmental externality, and credit constraints. We show that, to alleviate credit constraints and encourage investment, the second-best optimal emission tax falls short of marginal emission damages. The optimal response to shocks depends on how the shock affects the size of the environmental and credit market failures and the effectiveness of the tax in alleviating these market failures. Under mildly restrictive assumptions on functional forms, the optimal response to a (persistent) negative productivity shock or a tightening of credit is to reduce the emission tax. Our results are informative for how climate change policy should optimally change with the business cycle.     

Relative Emission Standard versus Tax under Oligopoly: The Role of Free Entry

We compare the effects of an emission tax, and those of a relative emission standard, on welfare and pollution levels under oligopolistic market structures. We consider the cases where the number of firms is fixed and where there is free entry and exit of firms. When the number of firms is fixed, (i) a relative emission standard is welfare-superior to an emission-equivalent emission tax, and (ii) an emission tax is emission-superior to a welfare-equivalent relative emission standard. Under free entry and exit, the results are just the opposite when the inverse demand function is concave.     

环境保护税对经济和碳排放影响研究——以江苏省为例

环境保护税的征收,有效减少了污染物排放,同时也会对经济和碳排放产生一定影响。通过构建包含环境保护税模块的CGE模型和江苏省2018年环境社会核算矩阵,模拟分析不同环境保护税税率对江苏省经济发展和碳排放的影响。研究发现:(1)征收环境保护税会给江苏省经济带来负面影响,但影响程度较小,当征收税率上升时,江苏省GDP、出口、省际调出等会下降,而居民和地方政府收入几乎没有变化。(2)环境保护税税率上升时,不仅会增加环境保护税收入,还会减少江苏省碳排放水平。(3)对于大多数行业,环境保护税税率上升会造成行业产出下降,但是对于污染物排放强度较低的行业,行业产出会上升,碳排放会增加。(4)为了更好地完成碳减排目标,建议江苏省可以适度增加环境保护税税率或加征碳税,对于污染物排放浓度较低的行业,可以采取补贴措施鼓励发展;对于污染物排放强度较高的行业,要推动转型升级,降低排放强度。     

Regulating a Polluting Oligopoly: Emission Tax or Voluntary Agreement?

This paper compares, in a polluting oligopoly, an emission tax and a form of environmental policy called voluntary agreement (VA). Here there are two ways of reducing pollution: output contraction and end‐of‐pipe abatement. Given the imperfect competition, firms’ reaction to the tax is sub‐optimal. They reduce output excessively in order to raise the price and do not abate enough. The VA is a take‐it‐or‐leave‐it contract on abatement effort, offered to the firms with the threat of a tax. It has a limited effect on output and always allows higher abatement than the tax. We find that this kind of VA may be more efficient than the tax in a concentrated industry, when pollution is not too harmful and when the abatement technology is rather efficient and cheap.     

Emission tax and optimal privatization in Cournot–Bertrand comparison

We compare a Cournot with a Bertrand duopoly in a differentiated mixed market when both emission tax and privatization policies are used together. We find that the optimal emission tax is always lower than the marginal environmental damage, and it is always lower under Cournot than under Bertrand. We also find that the optimal privatization is always a partial privatization, and it is always higher under Cournot than under Bertrand. The socially optimal combinations of emission tax and privatization will damage the environment most, but Cournot yields lower environmental damage and social welfare than those under Bertrand. Finally, we show that the environmental damage is non-monotone in the level of privatization under both Cournot and Bertrand competitions.     

Optimal Environmental Tax and Level of Privatization in an International Duopoly

This paper explores the optimal environmental tax and level of privatization in an international duopolistic market. We show that when the government is able to control the environmental tax and the extent of privatization, the optimal environmental tax is lower than the standard Pigouvian level. We also show that the optimal level of privatization of state-owned enterprises is partial privatization. Further, the optimal level of privatization is inversely dependent on the cleanup cost of past environmental contamination.     

Optimal nonlinear income taxation with a finite population

In the standard optimal income taxation problem, tax payments depend only on each consumer's own actions. Piketty [J. Econ. Theory 61 (1993) 23-41] shows that, if one individual's tax schedule depends on others’ actions and the government knows the exact ability distribution, it can implement any undistorted allocation as the unique revelation game outcome. If some individuals misreveal their types, Piketty's mechanism may assign infeasible allocations. We require that tax schedules must balance the government budget for every possible vector of revelations. When individuals reveal their type by simple announcements, all undistorted allocations can be still implemented, even with off-equilibrium feasibility constraints.     

Emission Taxes and Optimal Refunding Schemes with Endogenous Market Structure

The purpose of this paper is to investigate optimal schemes for refunding the emission tax in a free-entry market where the production process generates emissions. We consider the regulation by a three-part tax policy: the government sets an emission tax, a refunding scheme, and an entry-license tax. In contrast to the case of the two-part tax-refund policy under no entry, we show that even if it is impossible to obtain subsidies from outside, the first-best outcome is always attained. Further, the government’s budget constraint is binding under the optimal schemes. Our result implies that the tax-refund system works effectively in a market with endogenous entry.     

Environmental regulation of a power investment in an international market

We examine the optimal environmental regulation of three Norwegian power projects: energy conservation, a natural gas fired CCGT and a new hydro project. All projects reduce emissions elsewhere in the Nordic region, and the environmental costs of these emissions are not, in general, fully reflected in market prices. We develop a theory of second best optimal regulation for this case. The optimal regulation is found to deviate substantially from a purely domestic regulation. For instance, we find it optimal to grant a substantial credit to energy conservation. The credit is sensitive to the value of reduced CO₂ emissions and whether the current Norwegian end user tax should be interpreted as an environmental or a fiscal tax.     

Environmental Goods and Measures for Their Promotion: An Analysis Using a Fair Wage Model

In this paper, we model a two‐sector small open economy with emissions and unemployment associated with the fair wage effort hypothesis, and investigate the environmental and employment impact of an emission tax, a subsidy for purchasing environmental goods in the downstream polluting industry, and a subsidy to the upstream eco‐industry. We then show that if the eco‐industry is skilled labor intensive relative to the polluting final goods industry, while a subsidy for purchasing environmental goods decreases the unemployment rate of unskilled labor, it may increase total emissions. In contrast, the emission tax and the subsidy to eco‐industry firms worsen the unemployment rate, though both policies decrease total emissions. Hence, if the emission tax is set equal to the marginal environmental damage, and either a downstream or upstream subsidy is used to mitigate unskilled unemployment, the optimal subsidy to purchase the goods is positive whereas the optimal subsidy to the eco‐industry is negative, i.e., a tax on the eco‐industry.     

Environment,imperfect competition,and trade: Insights for optimal policy in general equilibrium

I build a two-country general oligopolistic equilibrium model, in which sectors differ in emissions and technologies, and pollution can be transboundary. I derive the optimal bilateral environmental policy for the economy as a whole, for the cases in which the environmental damage either linearly or quadratically increases in total pollution. The analysis highlights that the optimal emission tax can even be negative, and bilateral trade liberalization should be matched with either a rise or a fall in the optimal emission tax. The moments of the emission distribution and technology distribution across sectors are fundamental to implement optimal environmental policies.     

Optimal redistributive capital taxation in a neoclassical growth model

This paper provides a counterexample to the simplest version of the redistribution models considered by Judd (1985) in which the government chooses an optimal distortionary tax on capitalists to finance a lump-sum payment to workers. I show that the steady-state optimal tax on capital income is generally non-zero when the capitalists’ utility is logarithmic and the government faces a balanced-budget constraint. With log utility, agents’ optimal decisions depend solely on the current rate of return, not any future rates of return or tax rates. This feature of the economy effectively deprives the government of a useful policy instrument because promises about future tax rates can no longer influence current allocations. When combined with a lack of other suitable policy instruments (such as government bonds), the result is an inability to decentralize the allocations that are consistent with a zero-limiting capital tax. I show that the standard approach to solving the dynamic optimal tax problem yields the wrong answer in this (knife-edge) case because it fails to properly enforce the constraints associated with the competitive equilibrium. Specifically, the standard approach lets in an additional policy instrument through the back door.