This paper examines potential environmental tax policy reforms. It focuses primarily on a carbon tax, but also more briefly considers a range of other possible changes. These include revising or eliminating various energy and environmental tax credits and deductions (many of which might become...

This chapter provides an overview of key economic issues in the use of taxation as an instrument of environmental policy in the UK. It first reviews economic arguments for using taxes and other market mechanisms in environmental policy, discusses the choice of tax base, and considers the value...

One country that tries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may fear that other countries get a competitive advantage and increase emissions ("leakage"). Estimates from computable general equilibrium (CGE) models such as Elliott et al (2010a,b) indicate that 15% to 25% of abatement might be offset...

This paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other, distortionary taxes are present. We employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which, in a second best economy, optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the...

A two-region model is presented in which an imperfectly competitive firm produces a good with increasing returns at the plant level, and in which shipping costs exist between the two markets. Production of the good causes local pollution, and regional governments can levy pollution taxes or...

This paper examines the choice between revenue-raising and non-revenue-raising instruments for environmental protection in a second-best setting with pre- existing factor taxes. We find that interactions with pre-existing taxes influence the costs of regulation and seriously militate against...

A politically realistic approach to environmental policy seems to require avoiding significant profit-losses in major pollution-related industries. The government can avoid such losses by freely allocating some emissions permits or by exempting some inframarginal emissions from a pollution tax....

In recent years, cases in which state governments chose to override federal environmental regulation with tighter regulations of their own have become increasingly common, even for pollutants that have substantial spillovers across states. This paper argues that this change arose at least in...

We study a dynamic model of environmental protection in which the level of pollution is a state variable that strategically links policy making periods. Policymakers are forward looking but politically motivated: they have heterogeneous preferences and do not fully internalize the cost of...