We consider the design of a tax on greenhouse gas emissions for a developed country such as the United States. We consider three sets of issues: the optimal tax base, issues relating to the rate (including the use of the revenues and rate changes over time) and trade. We show that a...

The pace of activity around climate change legislation has picked up noticeably in 2007. The increased focus has brought new legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). These bills include cap-and-trade systems, and carbon taxes as well as energy bills that promote energy efficiency...

This paper measures the direct and indirect incidence of a carbon tax using current income and two measures of lifetime income to rank households. OUr results suggest that carbon taxes are more regressive when annual income is used as a measure of economic welfare that when proxies for lifetime...

In previous papers I have described a revenue and distributionally neutral approach to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that uses a carbon tax. The revenue from the carbon tax is used to finance an environmental earned income tax credit designed to be distributionally neutral. The carbon...

The U.S. tax code provides a number of subsidies for low-carbon technologies. I discuss the difficulties of achieving key policy goals with subsidies as opposed to using taxes to raise the price of pollution-related activities. In particular, subsidies lower the cost of energy (on average)...

We take a first look at limitations on the use of energy-related tax credits contained in the General Business Credit Credit (GBC) due to limitations within the regular corporate income tax as well as the AMT. Between 2000 and 2005, firms were unable to use all energy-related tax credits due to...

European countries have taken the lead in investigating in renewable energy electricity generating capital. While the EU-15 countries had less than half the installed capacity of the United States in 1990, they currently have more than double the capacity. This study investigates differences in...

Tax expenditures are a major source of support for energy related to activities in the federal budget exceeding direct budget support for energy by a factor of nearly six. Focusing on the policy goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption, I find these tax expenditures...