tourism and environmental taxes with special reference to the balearic ecotax abstract during the last few decades tourism has undergone rapid growth however it seems clear that this growth is not exempt from certain costs economists attention is increasingly directed at the economic social cultural and environmental repercussions of tourism regarded as externalities focusing on the aforementioned repercussions the aim of this study is to confirm both the existence of external environmental costs and the need to internalise them with the aid of appropriate economic instruments in this respect an outline is given of the recent proposal by the government of the autonomous community of the balearic islands to introduce a tourist tax on visitors presented to public opinion in the form of an environmental tax and a critical review is made of the proposal in the light of a number of criteria regarded as relevant in the description design and implementation of these taxes

the most popular tax in europe lessons from the irish plastic bags levy there have been occasional ad hoc efforts to influence consumer behaviour by the imposition of product taxes that reflect external costs imposed by such products that are not initially included in their price in the spirit of this idea in 2002 ireland introduced a 15 euro cent tax on plastic shopping bags previously provided free of charge to customers at points of sale the effect of the tax on the use of plastic bags in retail outlets has been dramatic a reduction in use in the order of 90 and an associated gain in the form of reduced littering and negative landscape effects costs of administration have been very low amounting to about 3 of revenues because it was possible to integrate reporting and collection into existing value added tax reporting systems response from the main stakeholders the public and the retail industry has been overwhelmingly positive central to this acceptance has been a policy of extensive consultation with these stakeholders the fact that a product tax can influence consumer behaviour significantly will be of interest to many policymakers in this area this paper analyses the plastic bag levy success story and provides insights and general guidelines for other jurisdictions planning similar proposals

lessons from the polder energy tax design in the netherlands from a climate change perspective this paper evaluates energy tax reform in the netherlands between 1988 and 2002 from a climate change perspective in particular the introduction of two indirect taxes on energy products is now responsible for a considerable amount of tax revenue from a green tax base the paper discusses the energy tax base and rate structure from a modern pigovian tax perspective and illustrates the practical difficulties involved in the indirect and non uniform taxation of emissions also further improvements of the energy tax structure are discussed such as a better targeting of the energy tax base and tax rate to fuel characteristics

unveiling the heterogeneous effect of energy taxes and income on residential energy consumption abstract the paper investigates the effect of energy taxes in the european union eu across different levels of residential final energy consumption rfec in the period 2005 2016 the analysis is based on quantile panel regression models that directly and indirectly consider energy taxes more precisely the developed models provide a multivariate framework for evaluating their effects and at the same time for validating the existence of the energy environmental kuznets curve ekc across the selected quantiles the results unveil significant heterogeneity in the rfec responses across quantiles specifically in less energy consuming eu countries an increase in energy taxes and energy prices influences stronger rfec and the rebound effect of real income and tertiary education is greater than in their more energy consuming peers moreover in the former the energy ekc hypothesis holds while in the latter its existence is not clear as well as the rebound effect caused by highly educated people consequently eu energy policy aiming at achieving energy and environmental targets has to consider the heterogeneity in rfec since the outcomes might be different for different energy consuming groups of countries

hot money inflows and monetary stability in china how the people s bank of china took up the challenge nonforeign direct investment capital inflows in china were particularly strong in 2003 and 2004 they have led to a rapid accumulation of international reserves and they may have provided excess liquidity to the chinese economy this article investigates how the central bank of china managed the rapid build up of international reserves in 2003 and 2004 the relationship between real international reserves and real domestic credit is examined with a vector error correction model estimated on monthly data from january 1997 to march 2006 empirical results show that this relationship was negative which suggests that the central bank succeeded in slowing down real domestic credit when real international reserves increased direct and indirect granger causality tests are implemented to show how the people s bank of china proceeded to control domestic credit

global warming and energy demand list of tables list of figures list of contributors preface 1 global warming and energy elasticities terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstonepart 1 estimating long term energy elasticities 2 alternative approaches to estimating long run energy demand elasticities an application to asian developing countries ron smith and m hashem pesaran 3 a survey of international energy elasticities neil manning and jago atkinson 4 long run demand elasticities for gasoline thomas sterner and mikael franzen 5 responses of energy demand in uk manufacturing to the energy price increases of 1973 and 1979 80 alan ingham 6 elasticities for oecd aggregate final energy demand lakis vouyoukas 7 modelling uk energy demand derek hodgson and keith millerpart ii energy the economy and greenhouse gas abatement 8 endogenous technological progress in fossil fuel demand laurence boone stephen hall david kemball cook and clare smith 9 uk energy price elasticities and their implications for long term co2 abatement terry barker 10 price elasticity and market structure overcoming obstacles to ensure energy efficiency tim jackson 11 rethinking the use of energy elasticities stefan p schleicher 12 revisiting the costs of co2 abatement paul ekins 13 asymmetrical price elasticities of energy demand michael grubb14 conclusions terry barker paul ekins and nick johnstone bibliography index

scientific basis for the greenhouse effect the international community may reach agreement to limit carbon emissions as early as i 992 when brazil will host a negotiating convention on climate change europe and japan have already made commitments to place ceilings on future emissions at or below present rates because the cost of switching to alternative fuels could be high with profound implications for long term economic growth especially in developing countries policy action must be based on the view that the science of the greenhouse effect is compelling this essay considers the scientific logic and evidence for the effect from the viewpoint of an economist it draws heavily on the findings of the intergovernmental panel on climate change ipcc i will stress that both the science and the policy discussion so far including by ipcc have focused insufficiently on effects in the very long term on the order of 250 to 300 years

energy and carbon taxes and their distributional implications this paper studies the equity effects of energy and carbon taxes as policy instruments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fulfil the legally binding reduction targets adopted in the 1997 kyoto protocol to the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc the equity effects of taxes on energy products are studied in the broader context of a revenue neutral environmental fiscal reform the paper shows that carbon or energy taxes are mildly regressive and that impacts on low income households are less than expected the distributional implications depend on various issues such as whether the type of fuel being taxed heating transport and in particular how the revenues are recycled back to the economy the importance of compensation and mitigation measures is also discussed

european environmental taxes and charges recent experience issues and trends abstract the use of environmental taxes and charges in oecd countries increased by over 50 between 1987 and 1994 while revenues raised by environmental taxes and charges remain small relative to overall taxation they comprise a rising proportion in most european countries several european countries have either undertaken or are considering systematic shifts in taxes away from labour and onto the use of environmental resources potential negative effects on competitiveness and regressive distributional effects are the major cause of concern with regard to the introduction of environmental taxes a number of ways of mitigating such effects exist and have been implemented

prices versus quantities in a second best setting the choice between taxes and tradable permits has been independently analysed by two distinct research traditions the first proceeds from weitzman s partial equilibrium sto chastic model and concludes that a tax should be preferred if the marginal abatement cost curve is steeper than the marginal environmental benefit curve the second utilises deter ministic general equilibrium models with pre existing distortionary taxes it concludes that non revenue raising instruments e g grandfathered tradable permits are costlier than rev enue raising ones e g a tax on every unit of pollution or auctioned permits to build a bridge between these two traditions we introduce in weitzman s model a positive cost of public funds due to pre existing distortionary taxes the tax admits a greater comparative advantage over the permits as compared to weitzman s classical result then we assume that the regulated industry blocks any proposal that poses it too high an expected burden this may require a transfer to firms in the form of freely allocated permits or lump sum tax rebate it turns out that if this acceptability constraint is binding then the comparative advantage of taxes over permits is still reinforced quantitatively even if the marginal benefit function is 50 more steeply sloped than the marginal cost function the price instrument should be preferred we also compare the expected net benefit of these two instruments to a contingent instrument which leads to the ex post optimum the superiority of the contingent instrument over the quantity one is higher than in first best

international and sectoral variation in industrial energy prices 1995 2015 energy price rises for industry are a major political concern access to cheap energy is often considered a key factor for the competitiveness of industry to enable international comparisons and to foster further empirical research on the impacts of energy price or tax differentials on a wide range of outcomes such as international trade and investment patterns we construct sector level energy prices for 12 industrial sectors in 48 countries for the period 1995 to 2015 our prices are constructed as weighted averages of fuel specific prices by fuel consumption we provide guidelines for the use of our energy price data which is made available for download as well as a set of stylized facts on major trends and variations and illustrative applications

the effect of carbon tax on per capita co2 emissions new huadu business school 09zd050 national social science foundation of china 09zd050 08ajy022 research foundation of ministry of education of china 10jzd0018 fundamental research funds for the central universities 2010221051

competitiveness and exemptions from environmental taxes in europe a number of european countries have introduced a variety of environmental taxes a common characteristic of their implementation is the inclusion of exemptions and tax relief in particular for some sectors of manufacturing industry this paper analyses the pattern and motivation of exemptions as they have developed in western european countries making clear the difference between the nominal and effective tax rates once the exemptions have been taken into account the principal motivation for exemptions relates to concern about competitiveness while particular environmentally intensive sectors may have some grounds for concern even these might be able to achieve cost effective environmental improvements such that their competitive position is not over disadvantaged while for an economy structured like the uk s an environmental tax plus rebate scheme sometimes called an ecological tax reform would be likely to yield benefits in terms of competitiveness the exemptions usually run counter to the environmental economic logic of using environmental taxes to internalise social costs and give economic signals that are based on the full costs of production and they are likely to increase the costs of achieving a given level of emission reduction with little justification for them also on the grounds of competitiveness it would therefore be undesirable on both economic and environmental grounds for them to remain a feature of the implementation of environmental taxes in the future

uk s climate change levy cost effectiveness competitiveness and environmental impacts this paper intends to examine the cost effectiveness of uk s climate change levy ccl its implications on competitiveness of firms and the environmental impact the paper briefly describes the levy and analyses it under the cannons of a good taxation policy the economic implications of the levy are discussed with theoretical and empirical perspectives change in net exports investment patterns and productivity and inclusion of compliance cost forms the basis for analysing the effect on competitiveness it discusses the options available to firms to safeguard their competitiveness if it is adversely affected by the ccl a description of the current scenario of the levy since its inception is also presented the paper argues the need for a comprehensive policy involving the use of standards emission trading as well as energy taxes to achieve emission and energy use reductions a focal point of this paper is to elucidate the pros and cons of the ccl energy tax with respect to an emission trading scheme

the effect of carbon tax on farm income evidence from a canadian province british columbia bc introduced north america s first carbon tax in 2008 an analysis of the impact of the bc carbon tax is of interest to various stakeholders in the jurisdiction where the tax was implemented other canadian provinces and other countries contemplating a carbon tax policy are looking for insights on how to optimize potential positive and negative consequences given that government agri environmental policies often emphasize farm level support and environmental performance there is interest in understanding the farm level impacts of the carbon tax the effect of the bc carbon tax on farm income and related production cost variables is investigated panel data from 2000 to 2015 are analyzed using both tabular and econometric approaches of the difference in difference method the results indicate that the carbon tax is associated with a decline in net farm income to receipts ratios ranging between 8 and 12 cents per dollar of farm receipts the analysis for costs to receipts ratios suggest that the carbon tax is directly related to higher commercial feed costs farm labour costs interest costs and depreciation costs results of the regression analysis indicate that all the carbon tax effects are highly statistically significant these findings can inform policy discussions about carbon tax effects on farmers

carbon taxation in russia prospects for a double dividend and improved energy efficiency russia is not only one of the world s major sources of carbon based energy coal oil and gas but is also one the most intensive users of energy furthermore russia accounts for a disproportionately large share of global carbon dioxide emissions some 5 to 6 of global carbon dioxide emissions eia 2011a it has been estimated world bank 2008 that russia could reduce its use of primary energy use by 45 with consequent economic and environmental benefits high energy and carbon intensity of the russia economy is inter alia explained by low energy prices due to high export taxes as well as administrative regulation of domestic prices of gas and electricity and low environmental taxes carbon taxes are one such pigouvian tax and they would address concerns on several fronts simultaneously in the short to medium term they would inter alia lead to lower ghg emissions and encourage the diffusion of more energy efficient technologies in the longer term the increased cost of energy inputs is expected to induce technological progress in this analysis the macroeconomic and sectoral effects of carbon taxes on the russia economy are examined this analysis addresses the following objectives i to test the double dividend hypothesis under perfect and imperfect competition in output markets to analyse ii the incidence of carbon taxes iii impacts on sectoral competitiveness iv effects on income equity and v interactions of carbon taxes with other taxes a computable single country multi sector comparative static cge model is employed russland verfugt nicht nur uber einen der grosten vorrate an kohlenstoffbasierter energie wie kohle rohol und gas sondern ist auch einer der grosten energieverbraucher daruber hinaus ist russland fur einen uberproportional grosen anteil von kohlendioxid emission etwa 5 bis 6 der weltweiten kohlendioxidemission verantwortlich mit der einfuhrung einer kohlendioxidsteuer konnten gleichzeitig unterschiedliche wirkungen erzielt werden kurz und mittelfristig wurden kohlenstoffsteuern sowohl zu einer reduzierung von treibhausgasemissionen als auch zur einfuhrung von energieeffizienteren technologien fuhren langfristig wird erwartet dass hohe energiekosten den anreiz zur entwicklung und zur investition in energiesparenden technischen fortschritt erhohen die vorliegende arbeit analysiert und bewertet die makrookonomischen und sektoralen auswirkungen einer einfuhrung von kohlenstoffsteuern auf die russische wirtschaft die ziele der arbeit bestehen darin die hypothese der doppelten dividende fur den fall des vollkommenen und des unvollkommenen wettbewerbs auf gutermarkten zu uberprufen und die inzidenz einer kohlenstoffsteuer ihre auswirkungen auf die sektorale wettbewerbsfahigkeit ihre auswirkungen auf die einkommensverteilung und die interaktion von kohlenstoffsteuern mit anderen steuern zu analysieren und zu bewerten als methodischer ansatz wurde ein single country und multi sektor model gewahlt

domestic and international influences on green taxation economists have made a strong case for the relative efficiency of market based mechanisms for environmental regulation such as cap and trade and green taxes yet the spread of these forms has been limited and traditional command and control regulation still predominates the authors explain geographical and temporal variation in green tax burdens by considering their domestic and international determinants modeling international influences using spatial lags hypotheses are tested using panel data on organisation for economic co operation and development member states from 1995 to 2004 at the domestic level the authors show that green tax burdens are influenced by the left right and environmental positions of legislative medians and the power of the energy producing sector among other factors the authors also show that ideas about policy diffuse through international networks generated by trade and environmental intergovernmental organizations but they do not find compelling evidence for intern

carbon taxes and carbon emissions trading this paper surveys the literature on and examples of current implementation of carbon taxes and carbon emission permits it sets out the theoretical basis for these instruments with special reference to the revenue recycling and tax interaction effects this theoretical work concludes that instruments which raise revenue which can be recycled so as to reduce pre existing distortionary taxes are significantly less costly than those which do not the paper then reviews the sizable literature on the distributional effects of these instruments especially with regard to industrial competitiveness and regressive effects on low income groups evaluating attempts to mitigate these where they are perceived as unacceptable the paper concludes that such efforts at mitigation while possible can substantially reduce the efficiency benefits of the instruments the projected costs of carbon taxes depend on a wide range of assumptions this is still a contested area but the paper concludes that on a range of plausible assumptions these costs need not be high finally the paper notes that early evaluations of the environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes have been generally positive this suggests that if concern about anthropogenic climate change continues to increase more countries will introduce carbon taxes and emission permits with the latter increasingly auctioned

the intra country distributional impact of policies to fight climate change a survey abstract in this paper we present a survey of distributional impact analysis of environmental policies with emphasis on taxes envisaged or implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ghg these policies usually aim at reducing ghg directly or indirectly however they can produce important changes in factor allocation relative prices in specific countries as well as on world markets when adopted by a large number of countries changes in welfare can be important for vulnerable groups of population in developing countries this survey reviews the evidence on the incidence of these policies in the process it shows that the computable general equilibrium cge microsimulation approach has not been fully exploited in the context

the reform of the european energy tax directive exploring potential economic impacts in the eu27 abstract the aim of this study is to analyze the effect that the energy tax directive reform proposed in 2011 would have if implemented on the level of prices in the different sectors of the 27 countries of the european union we apply a multiregional and multisectoral model of trade flows that takes into account all the intersectoral and intercountry interdependences in the production processes using the world input output database we perform two different simulations the first one considers the tax changes proposed by the reform the second one shows the impact the reform would have entailed if it were applied also to sectors belonging to the european trade system the main finding of the first simulation shows that the new energy tax regime would have had a low economic cost in terms of impact on prices less than 1 in all the countries so the concerns about competitiveness do not find empirical support in our results suggesting the need for further analyses to find out the reasons that caused the failure of a reform that was an important step to introduce a taxation explicitly linked to co 2 emissions the second simulation however leads to strongly different results pointing out the relevance of maintaining significant economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions for the european trade system sectors by improving the emission market performance or by applying carbon taxation also to these sectors

energy taxation in a small open economy social efficiency gains versus industrial concerns welfare analyses of energy taxes typically show that systems with uniform rates perform better than differentiated systems especially if revenue can be recycled by cutting taxes that are more distortionary however in practical policy efficiency gains must be traded off against industrial concerns presumably energy dependent industries of small open economies will suffer relatively more if taxed this computable general equilibrium cge study examines the social costs of compensating the energy intensive export industries in norway for their profit losses from imposing the same electricity tax on all industries the costs are surprisingly modest this is explained by the role of the nordic electricity market which is still limited enough to respond to national energy tax reforms thus an electricity price reduction partly neutralizes the direct impact of the tax on profits in addition we examine the effects of different compensation schemes and find significantly lower compensation costs when the scheme is designed to release productivity gains

environmental regulation a value theoretic and class based analysis following a value theoretic and class based approach it is argued in this paper that ecological problems are inseparably linked to the process of extracting surplus value in capitalism and owing to their adverse impacts instigate struggles over the appropriation of nature these struggles fought within and outside the state by competing agents shape environmental regulation in particular taxes permits command and control measures and subsidies affect prices profits and rents and have class and other social implications evidence of current environmental regulation shows that it takes places under the great influence of capitalist concerns

a future for carbon taxes abstract carbon taxes have been frequently advocated as a cost effective instrument for reducing emissions however in the practice of environmental policies only six countries have implemented taxes based on the carbon content of the energy products in this paper we evaluate carbon taxes with regard to their competitiveness distributional and environmental impacts the evidence shows that carbon taxes may be an interesting policy option and that their main negative impacts may be compensated through the design of the tax and the use of the generated fiscal revenues

are co2 taxes regressive evidence from the danish experience abstract denmark today carries one of the heaviest environmental tax burdens in the world bringing in around 10 of public revenues while evaluations have shown that the danish co 2 and other environmental taxes work as an effective measure to reduce emissions a considerable barrier to increased use of these instruments today seems to be a widespread perception of their socially adverse effects in this article it is demonstrated that co 2 taxes imposed on energy consumption in households as well as in industry do in fact tend to be regressive and therefore have undesirable distributional effects this holds especially for taxes imposed directly on households to analyze this we apply national consumer survey statistics in combination with input output tables

emission taxes and tradable permits a comparison of views on long run efficiency we compare three different views on the long runefficiencies of emission taxes which includethresholds inframarginalexemptions and of tradeable emission permitswhere some permits areinitially free the differences are caused bydifferent assumptions aboutwhether thresholds and free permits should besubsidies given only to firmsthat produce or full property rights treatingtax thresholds as well asfree permits as property rights would departfrom the conventional view but would allow greater flexibility in makingeconomic instruments bothefficient and acceptable such flexibilitycould be very important inachieving efficient control of greenhouse gasemissions

crude oil equity and gold futures open interest co movements abstract the study is unique in its investigation of the co movements between trading activity on the equity crude oil and gold futures market proxied by open interest it provides empirical evidence that stock and crude oil futures demand for hedging is positively related but reacts negatively to sudden shocks in open interest on the other market furthermore gold futures open interest reacts positively to shocks in the crude oil futures trading activity the level of instantaneous linkage is related to external market conditions during periods of unstable financial markets the correlation between equity and energy futures open interest decreases and the correlation of the open interest on the equity and gold futures market turns weak negative this indicates hedging funds allocation toward gold market in periods of stock market uncertainty

energy subsidies structure of electricity prices and technological change of energy use abstract this paper addresses the impact of the structure of energy prices on technological change in renewable energy sources it operates on two fields of research that are often not related to each other firstly the increasing interest in environmental economics for the determinants of green technological change and secondly the impact of government policies aimed at subsidizing energy prices recent research claims a positive relationship between energy prices and the number of patents in the fields of energy efficiency this paper extends this research by investigating the impact of the price structure of electricity on patent counts in 1 renewable energy sources 2 wind energy and 3 solar power in nearly all oecd countries in the period 1990 2006 industrial energy users pay a lower price per energy unit than households due among others to government subsidy policies the empirical results show that reducing government subsidies and hence increasing the electricity price of large industrial electricity users relative to the price paid by small residential users provides a clear incentive to increase inventions as measured by number of patents in the technical fields of solar and wind energy these results are an important input in the debate on reducing government support to large energy users

transitional politics emerging incentive based instruments in environmental regulation abstract this paper proposes a positive theory of environmental instrument choice we study a democratic society that seeks to lower the level of pollution from industrial sources to a pre specified target the target can be implemented by one of three instruments s uniform emission standards p tradeable permits and t emission taxes the conflict of interest between special interests representing polluters and the electorate is resolved by an elected politician we characterize when each of the three policy instruments is chosen in political equilibrium and show that the transition observed in many countries from s to either p or t can be understood as a natural consequence of increasingly ambitious environmental targets

carbon taxes with exemptions in an open economy a general equilibrium analysis of the german tax initiative abstract sectoral exemptions from environmental regulation are applied in many countries to avoid adverse adjustment effects in specific industries the problem with exemptions is that they can make environmental policy more costly our paper analyzes the welfare costs of exemptions in environmental policy together with the issue of unilateral carbon taxes in an open economy several countries within the eu have introduced or contemplated unilateral taxes to reduce anthropogenic co2emissions taxes which are unilaterally imposed in an open economy can have significant impacts on production and employment of energy and export intensive industries to save jobs by maintaining international competitiveness most co2taxation schemes include exemptions for energy and export intensive industries as a compromise between environmental objectives and employment in these sectors this paper shows that such compromises are costly as the tax base narrows the dead weight loss increases our calculations illustrate this point in the framework of a static general equilibrium model for west germany calibrated to 1990 data we evaluate the excess costs of exemptions as a means of saving jobs in specific industries relative to an alternative instrument a uniform carbon tax cum wage subsidy which achieves an identical level of national emissions and employment at a fraction of the cost