In the tax policy debate, differentiation of value-added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns. Our quantitative analysis for Germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced. We find that the abolition of VAT differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects. Instead,...

Given the coexistent EU priorities concerning the competitiveness of European industries and international emissions regulation at the company level, this paper assesses the efficiency and competitiveness implications of linking the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to emerging trading schemes...

One of grand challenges which are faced by Russia today is to deregulate its gas market while favouring longer-term growth of economy. Since the 1990s, several proposals for structural reforms of Russian gas industry have been intensively debated, including the split-up of Gazprom. From the...

We analyse the distributional effects of increased oil excises in Belgium by combining a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model with the EUROMOD microsimulation framework that exploits the rich detail of household-level data. The link between the CGE model and the micro level is top-down,...

To help first- or second-year graduate students in economics apply their theoretical training, this paper shows how to solve a simple and intuitive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model using a calculator. Because this simplified Harberger model uses Cobb Douglas functional forms for...

The most cost-effective policies for achieving CO2 abatement (e.g., carbon taxes) fail to get off the ground politically because of unacceptable distributional consequences. This paper explores CO2 abatement policies designed to address distributional concerns. Using an intertemporal numerical...

We present a novel methodology to quantify the social costs and benefits (net social costs) of electric vehicles as an endogenous, demand-driven abatement technology in a general equilibrium framework. This new costing approach relates general equilibrium effects resulting from an increased...

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...

This paper argues for introducing the role of capital malleability into the analysis of environmental policies. The issue is explored by means of a theoretical model, a numerical analysis and a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Considering the three approaches together is fundamental...

The policy instruments for emissions reductions will be an integral part of a Post Kyoto Climate Regime. In this paper we compare a harmonized international carbon tax to a cap and trade system with different allocation rules for the emission caps. The caps are based either on the requirement...