Environmental protection is one of Europe's key values. The EU has set clear policy objectives to achieve its environmental goals. The EU has favoured market-based instruments, among which fiscal instruments to tackle the climate change problem. This paper takes a policy-making perspective and...

We estimate the long-run effect of a uniform carbon tax on energy consumption by using a new and unique dataset in which effective tax rates of OECD countries are calculated in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. The effective tax rates account for the widely discussed tax deductions for specific...

This paper presents the first investigation of the effects of optimal energy taxation in an urban spatial setting. Rather than exploring the effects of a carbon tax, our approach is to derive the supplements to existing taxes that are needed to support the social optimum. We then analyze the...

A small open economy produces a consumer good, green and black energy, and imports fossil fuel at an uncertain price. Unregulated competitive markets are shown to be inefficient. The implied market failures are due to the agents' attitudes toward risk, to risk shifting and the uniform price for...