Emissions Pricing Policies and Business Cycles: Fixed vs. Variable Tax Regimes

As by-products, emissions follow economic fluctuations. Ignoring this fact in environmental policies can lead to unexpected emissions fluctuations and an increase in intervention costs. Using a real business cycle model, we compare two policies: a fixed tax policy where the price is constant over time and a variable tax regime where the tax rate is set at the beginning of each period. We find that while both programs result in lower emissions, a variable tax regime is preferable since first, it can ensure that the maximum welfare is always achieved, and second, it is more effective in stabilising emissions.     

S&P 500 volatility,volatility regimes,and economic uncertainty

We assess the relationship between regime-dependent volatility in S&P 500, economic policy uncertainty, the S&P 500 bull and bear sentiment spread (bb_sp), as well as the Chicago Board Options Exchange's VIX over the period 2000–2018. Our findings from two-covariate GARCH–MIDAS (GM) methodology, regime switching Markov Chain, and quantile regressions suggest that the association of realized volatility and sentiment varies across high- and low-volatility regimes and depends on investors’ sensitivity toward incidents of market uncertainties under these regimes. The findings suggest that these indicators may not be useful in volatility forecasting, especially under high-volatility regimes.