Environmental taxation very often comprises special provisions for parts of the business sector in order to attenuate effects on competitiveness of emissionintensive activities. This paper discusses motives, alternative designs and criteria for the evaluation of such safeguards and analyzes if...

Proposals to increase environmentally related taxes are often challenged on competitiveness grounds. The concern is that value creation in certain sectors might decline domestically if a country introduces environmentally related taxes unilaterally. Furthermore, environmental goals might not be...

In October 2003, the European Union introduced a Directive which widens the scope of the EU's minimum taxation system from mineral oils to all energy products including coal, natural gas and electricity. It aims at reducing distortions that currently exist between Member States as well as...

This paper is the first to investigate the effectiveness of fuel taxation to jointly deliver climate and health benefits in a quasi-experimental setting. Using the synthetic control method, we compare carbon and air pollutant emissions of the actual and synthetic German transport sector...