In conducting economic policy, governments generally face conflicts in various objectives, e.g. between efficiency and equity. In Norway, one objective of energy politics has been to reduce electricity consumption, and several tax increases have been proposed. Whether this objective may be in...

The paper analyses how equilibrium adjustments of the wage rate affect the scope for tax rate reductions when the government experiences an exogenous increase in non-tax revenues. It shows within a stylized model that increased revenue in the form of a tradable will increase the wage rate, which...

Tradable black (CO2) and green (renewables) quotas gain in popularity and stringency within climate policies of many OECD countries. The overlapping regulation through both instruments, however, may have important adverse economic implications. Based on stylized theoretical analysis and...

Grandfathered emissions permits redistribute income to wealthy households by creating firm rents that ultimately accrue to shareholders. Consequently, they can be highly regressive, even if the poor do not have large budget shares for polluting goods. Using an analytical model, this paper...

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical literature on the household distribution of the costs and benefits of pollution control policies, and ways of integrating distributional issues into environmental cost–benefit analysis. Most studies find that policy costs fall disproportionately on...

Reserve requirements in electricity markets may get each producer to internalize the cost of grid-wide blackouts it might cause if unable to meet consumer demand. Markets for how such capacity might be procured have been studied. Less examined is how the costs of reserve capacity are covered....

This paper derives and implements formulas for the welfare effects of differentiated and uniform mileage taxes, gasoline taxes, and per mile insurance premiums, for reducing the external costs of passenger vehicle accidents. The model distinguishes three driver groups and five vehicle groups,...

Federal policies aimed to slow global warming would impose potentially significant costs on households that vary depending on the policy approach that is used. This paper evaluates the effects of a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program on households in each of 11 regions of the country and sorted...

Carbon taxes introduce potentially uneven cost burdens across the population. The distribution of these costs is especially important in affecting political outcomes. This paper links dynamic overlapping-generations and microsimulation models of the United States to estimate the initial...

Carbon taxes efficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions but are criticized as regressive. This paper links dynamic overlapping-generation and microsimulation models of the United States to estimate the initial incidence. We find that while carbon taxes are regressive, the incidence depends much...