Environmental tax schemes in OECD countries often involve tax rates differentiated across industrial, commercial and household sectors. In this paper, we investigate four potentially important arguments for these deviations from uniform taxation: pre-existing tax distortions, domestic equity...

Three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of EU climate policy. If implemented at the lowest possible cost, the 20% emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0.5-2.0% by 2020. Second-best policies increase costs. A...

In a world where the prospects of a global agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions are bleak, the idea of using trade policy as an implicit regulation of foreign emission sources has gained many supporters in countries contemplating unilateral climate policies. Embodied carbon tariffs tax...

Unilateral carbon policies are inefficient due to the fact that they generally involve emission reductions in countries with high marginal abatement costs and because they are subject to carbon leakage. In this paper, we ask whether the use of carbon tariffs - tariffs on the carbon embodied in...

Three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of EU climate policy. If implemented at the lowest possible cost, the 20% emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0.5-2.0% by 2020. Second-best policies increase costs. A...