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

environmental taxation inequality and engel s law the double dividend of redistribution empirical evidence shows that low income households spend a high share of their income on pollution intensive goods this fuels the concern that an environmental tax reform could be regressive we employ a framework which accounts for the distributional effect of environmental taxes and the recycling of the revenues on both households and firms to quantify changes in the optimal tax structure and the equity impacts of an environmental tax reform we characterize when an optimal environmental tax reform does not increase inequality even if the tax system before the reform is optimal from a non environmental point of view if the tax system before the reform is calibrated to stylized data and is thus non optimal we find that there is a large scope for inequality reduction even if the government is restricted in its recycling options

house price booms current account deficits and low interest rates one of the most striking features of the period before the great recession is the strong positive correlation between house price appreciation and current account defi cits not only in the united states but also in other countries that have subsequently experienced the highest degree of fi nancial turmoil a progressive relaxation of credit standards can rationalize this empirical observation lower collateral requirements facilitate access to external funding and drive up house prices the current account turns negative because households borrow from the rest of the world at the same time however the world real interest rate counterfactually increases the two key ingredients that reconcile a demand based explanation of house price booms and current account defi cits with the evidence on real interest rates are nominal interest rates lower than the predictions of a standard monetary policy rule in leveraged economies and foreign exchange rate pegs in saving countries

charges in the industrial water sector comparison between ireland and spain the european treaty supports the application of the polluter pays principle in all environmental policies including the water framework directive this paper assesses the efficiency of water charging systems in two european regions the regions examined are the south west region of ireland and the navarre region in spain which were selected because they are similar in terms of economic indicators but different in terms of water pricing structures the paper describes the development and application of a simple model to analyse data on water charging systems from these two regions we present the results of a detailed scenario based investigation illustrating the differences between experience composition and basis impact and constraints on the application of water charges for both regions the key findings are that existing water charges do not provide incentives for users to use water efficiently and thereby do not contribute effectively to the environmental objectives of the water framework directive

what do we know about carbon taxes an inquiry into their impacts on competitiveness and distribution of income abstract the kyoto protocol to the united nations framework convention on climate change unfccc has set legally binding emissions targets for a basket of six greenhouse gases and timetables for industrialised countries it has also incorporated three international flexibility mechanisms however the articles defining the flexibility mechanisms carry wording that their use must be supplemental to domestic actions this has led to the open debates on interpretations of these supplementarity provisions such debates ended at the resumed sixth conference of the parties cop to the unfccc held in bonn july 2001 and at the subsequent cop 7 in marrakesh november 2001 the final wording in the bonn agreement reaffirmed in the marrakesh accords at least indicates that domestic policies will have an important role to play in meeting annex b countries emissions commitments carbon taxes have long been advocated because of their cost effectiveness in achieving a given emissions reduction in this paper the main economic impacts of carbon taxes are assessed based on a review of empirical studies on existing carbon energy taxes it is concluded that competitive losses and distributive impacts are generally not significant and definitely less than often perceived however given the ultimate objective of the framework convention future carbon taxes could have higher rates than those already imposed and thus the resulting economic impacts could be more acute in this context it has been shown that how to use the generated fiscal revenues will be of fundamental importance in determining the final economic impacts of carbon taxes finally we briefly discuss carbon taxes in combination with other domestic and international instruments

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

opening the policy window for ecological economics katrina as a focusing event abstract ecological economics and its allied trans disciplinary fields are well established in academia but so far have failed to have significant influence on policy makers public policy research and theory suggest that three process streams must converge in order to shape the political agenda and change policy kingdon j 1984 agenda alternatives and public policies boston little brown first the problem stream emerges when an existing condition is defined as a problem a discrepancy between current reality and a desired goal and critical policy makers accept the definition of the problem the policy stream emerges as consensus grows around policy instruments to solve the problem the politics stream emerges as the national mood and leading politicians accept the gravity of the problem and are willing to implement the policies required to address it when these three streams converge a policy window is created that can move issues onto the political agenda and into formal policy a focusing event like katrina can bring these three process streams together however different strategic representations of the situation may allow entirely different problem definitions and policies to dominate the political agenda this paper analyzes the extent to which katrina has opened a policy window for ecological economics we find that katrina has strengthened the three streams necessary to create a policy window for ecological economics but that the dominant economic paradigm currently on the political agenda market fundamentalism is strategically presenting katrina as supporting its own problem stream and policy stream key elements of the ecological economic agenda such as investing in natural capital are making it on to the political agenda but overall market fundamentalist policies appear likely to dominate we argue that ecological economists have failed to galvanize public acceptance for the policy goals of sustainable scale and just distribution thus failing to effectively communicate their perspectives on problem definition and or policy solutions to policy makers and the voting public we conclude with suggestions for how ecological economists can still take advantage of the katrina window and better prepare for future windows opening

credit constraints and the current account a test for the japanese economy abstract this paper constructs a small open economy version of the kiyotaki and moore 1997 credit cycles journal of political economy 105 2 211 248 model along the line developed by kasa 1998 borrowing constraints and asset market dynamics evidence from pacific basin federal reserve bank of san francisco economic review 3 17 28 and derives a closed form solution of the current account dynamics using the solution a null hypothesis of no credit constraints is tested for the japanese economy the empirical results show that the null hypothesis is strongly rejected and that the estimated signs of the parameters are consistent with the model the kiyotaki and moore model would give an adequate description of the japanese economy

aggregate spending and the terms of trade is there a laursen metzler effect this paper investigates the spending and current account effects of terms of trade shifts in a model where households maximize utility over an infinite planning period in the framework developed here an economy specialized in production must experience a fall in aggregate spending and a current surplus as a result of an unanticipated permanent worsening in its terms of trade the paper s model thus provides a setting in which the current account deficit predicted by laursen and metzier harberger and others fails to materialize

income distribution and macroeconomics this paper analyzes the role of wealth distribution in macroeconomics through investment in human capital it is shown that in the presence of credit markets imperfections and indivisibilities in investment in human capital the initial distribution of wealth affects aggregate output and investment both in the short and in the long run as there are multiple steady states this paper therefore provides an additional explanation for the persistent differences in per capita output across countries furthermore the paper shows that cross country differences in macroeconomic adjustment to aggregate shocks can be attributed among other factors to differences in wealth and income distribution across countries

international capital mobility amongst the major industrialised countries too little or too much this paper examines capital flows among the major industrialized countries with a view to assessing m feldstein and c horioka s 1980 claim that international capital mobility is limited it argues that saving investment correlation tests are inherently flawed and proposes an alternative methodology for testing the degree of international capital mobility it finds that capital flows have been excessive in the sense that they are driven by speculative forces rather than by economic fundamentals copyright 1995 by royal economic society

endogenous inequality and fluctuations in a two country model abstract we study a two country version of matsuyama s k matsuyama financial market globalization symmetry breaking and endogenous inequality of nations econometrica 72 2004 853 884 world economy model as in matsuyama s model symmetry breaking can be observed and symmetry breaking generates endogenously determined levels of inequality in addition we show that when the countries differ in population size their interaction through credit markets may lead to persistent endogenous fluctuations

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

productivity shocks budget deficits and the current account abstract productivity shocks and budget deficits are considered to be two key determinants of the current account in order to assess formally the role of both factors in driving current account movements the present paper extends the standard intertemporal model of the current account to allow for non ricardian household behavior testable cross equation restrictions for the current account and investment are derived by drawing on the distinction between country specific and global innovations to productivity as well as to the government budget we test the restrictions of the model against time series data for 21 oecd countries and find evidence in support of the model

air pollutant taxation an empirical survey abstract this paper provides an empirical analysis of the current taxation of the air pollutants sulphur dioxide nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide in the scandinavian countries the netherlands france and japan political motivation and technical factors such as tax base rate structure and revenue use are compared conclusions are drawn characterizing the general concepts of the current policies

indivisible labor and the business cycle abstract a growth model with shocks to technology is studied labor is indivisible so all variability in hours worked is due to fluctuations in the number employed we find that unlike previous equilibrium models of the business cycle this economy displays large fluctuations in hours worked and relatively small fluctuations in productivity this finding is independent of individuals willingness to substitute leisure across time this and other findings are the result of studying and comparing summary statistics describing this economy an economy with divisible labor and post war u s time series

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

capital mobility in the world economy an alternative test abstract this paper proposes a new measure and test of international capital mobility in order to investigate capital flows we utilize a small open economy version of campbell and mankiw s nber macroeconomic annual 1989 185 216 permanent income model our capital mobility measure focuses on the correlation between the country s consumption and net output instead of the correlation between domestic saving and domestic investment proposed by feldstein and horioka economic journal 90 1980 314 329 the model is estimated for 11 oecd countries the results suggest that the null hypothesis of perfect capital mobility cannot be rejected for more than a half of these countries on the other hand some kind of capital mobility constraints are detected for several countries including the united states and japan

regulation school and environment theoretical proposals and avenues of research abstract the article explores the relevance of a particular approach of the institutionalist movement regulation theory to deal with the relationship between the economy and the environment regulation theory which appeared in france at the end of the 1970s is mainly interested in macroeconomic issues in contrast until now it has tended to neglect environmental questions by taking several key concepts of this theory accumulation regime mode of regulation institutional forms we have sought to assess its significance vis a vis the environmental field more precisely from the perspective of establishing an environmental regulationist theory we propose considering the economic relation to the environment as the articulation of three forms a transhistorical form a general capitalist form and a specific capitalist form the latter being variable in capitalist time and space we give several illustrations of the variability of the relation to the environment depending on the different accumulation regimes and the different modes of regulation two principal avenues of research are proposed historical analyses for given economic areas and comparative analyses relating in particular to different capitalist areas

competitive intelligence and disclosure competitive intelligence ci activities open new opportunities for firms to acquire and disclose information we show that disclosure depends on the relative usefulness of information to the competing firms and is generally less more likely with cournot bertrand competition and when firms adopt product differentiation strategies when ci costs are independent of information characteristics each firm seeks information solely useful to itself and discloses it unless it is a bertrand competitor with customer information only when the cost advantage is sufficiently great does each firm seek information useful to itself and its rival

the importance of the design of market based instruments for co2 mitigation an age analysis for spain in the past few decades economists have defended the use of market based instruments mbi in environmental and climate policy there have been many papers which have compared the costs of attaining environmental objectives with mbis and with command and control instruments however very few have compared different mbis in examining these costs this paper seeks to analyse various mbis for co2 mitigation from the viewpoint of cost effectiveness using an age applied general equilibrium model for the case of spain a distinction is drawn between 1 quantity instruments which represent different extents of a market for emission permits and 2 price instruments which represent different types of tax each instrument can affect different segments of the emission sources and therefore can have very different effects on the economy as a whole we show how mbi can help to minimise mitigation costs but also how taxes and tradable emission permits that are limited or constrained by many exemptions and distortions can raise costs considerably

environmental regulation and technology transfers this paper analyzes the situation in which a national government introduces environmental regulations within the framework of an international duopoly with environmental regulations an environmental tax imposed by the government in the home country can induce a foreign firm with advanced abatement technology to license it to a domestic firm without this technology furthermore when the domestic firm s production technology is less efficient than that of the foreign firm the foreign firm may freely reveal its technology to the domestic firm these improvements through the voluntary transfer of technology imply that environmental regulations have positive impacts on innovation resume reglementation environnementale et transferts de technologie ce texte analyse le cas d un gouvernement national qui etablit des reglementations environnementales dans le cadre d un duopole international avec reglementations environnementales le gouvernement national impose une taxe environnementale au plan domestique qui peut induire une firme etrangere qui dispose d une technologie avancee qui reduit l impact environnemental a vendre une licence permettant d utiliser cette technologie a une firme domestique qui ne l a pas de plus quand la technologie de production de la firme domestique est moins efficace que celle de la firme etrangere la firme etrangere peut reveler sa technologie a la firme domestique ces ameliorations a travers les transferts volontaires de technologie impliquent que les reglementations environnementales ont des impacts positifs sur l innovation

a model of moral hazard credit cycles this paper considers a simple model of credit cycles driven by moral hazard in financial intermediation financial agents or bankers must earn moral hazard rents but the cost of these rents can be efficiently spread over an agent s entire career by promising large late career rewards if the agent has a consistently successful record dynamic interactions among different generations of financial agents can create credit cycles with repeated booms and recessions in recessions a scarcity of trusted financial intermediaries limits investment and reduces employment under such conditions taxing workers to subsidize bankers may increase employment enough to make the workers better off

partitioning of resources in production an empirical analysis abstract industrial economies ingest materials energy and information to produce goods and services and excrete wastes and emissions wastes can be minimized and the relative amounts of resources which go into goods and services as opposed to waste are essential to clean production and to the sustainability of the production system a regression model based on empirical data is presented that provides a partition coefficient expressing the ratio of energy or material resources invested in goods to energy going to waste partition coefficients are developed for five countries and are shown to be related to gdp energy and material consumption and energy and waste intensities higher partition coefficients mean higher productivity and lower energy waste and material intensities in addition energy use capita and pollution capita is lower the price of energy to the industrial sector is related to the partition coefficient the policy implications are that partitioning of resources to goods should be maximized and waste minimized for economic as well as environmental reasons

environmental policy in majoritarian systems abstract this paper sheds new light on the determination of environmental tax policies in majoritarian federal electoral systems such as the u s and derives implications for the environmental federalism debate on whether the national or local government should have authority over environmental taxes in the absence of majority bias the socially preferred policy would be federal district level taxation which accounts both for cross boundary pollution and differences in industry concentration across districts in majoritarian systems however where the legislature consists of geographically distinct electoral districts the majority party at the national or state level favors home districts depending on the location of polluting industries and the associated damages the majority party may therefore impose sub optimally high or low pollution taxes due to a majority bias majority bias can influence the social welfare ranking of alternative environmental tax policies in some cases majority bias may make decentralized or federal uniform taxation the preferred solution

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

collateral constraints and the current account theory and evidence we investigate the impact of domestic financial frictions on the current account dynamics in asian countries before and after the asian financial crisis in 1997 1998 by introducing collateral constraints into the intertemporal current account approach we examine six asian countries before the crisis collateral constraints significantly impact the current account in korea malaysia the philippines and thailand but after the crisis they do not our study shows that the impact of domestic financial frictions on the current account changes before and after a financial crisis jel f32 f41

credit cycles redux theoretical studies have shown that under unorthodox assumptions on preferences and production technologies collateral constraints can act as a powerful amplification and propagation mechanism of exogenous shocks we investigate whether or not this result holds under more standard assumptions we find that collateral constraints typically generate small output amplification large amplification is obtained as a knife edge type of result

current account dynamics under information rigidity and imperfect capital mobility abstract the current account in developed countries is highly persistent and volatile in comparison to their output growth the standard intertemporal current account model with rational expectations re fails to explain the observed current account and consumption dynamics the re model extended with imperfect capital mobility by shibata and shintani 1998 can account for the consumption dynamics but only at the cost of the explanatory power for the volatility of the current account this paper replaces re in the intertemporal current account model with sticky information si in which consumers are inattentive to shocks to their income the si model can better explain a persistent and volatile current account than the re model but it overpredicts the persistence of changes in consumption the si model extended with imperfect capital mobility explains both the current account and consumption provided that sufficiently high degrees of information rigidity and imperfect capital mobility are considered

consumption permanent income and financial wealth in canada empirical evidence on the intertemporal approach to the current account the intertemporal approach to the current account is rejected as a complete explanation of the canadian current account federal government fiscal policy plays an important role in the determination of the current account a private sector agent that treats its holdings of net liabilities of the federal government as net wealth accumulates the sum of these liabilities and the net liabilities of non residents as part of an intertemporally optimal plan this result indicates both fiscal policy and intertemporal considerations are important determinants of current account behaviour consommation revenu permanent et richesse financiere au canada resultats empiriques d une approche au compte courant mettant l accent sur la dimension intertemporelle cet article montre que l approche mettant l accent sur la dimension intertemporelle ne produit pas une explication complte du comportement du compte courant canadien i1 semble que la politique fiscale du gouvernement federal joue un r6le important dans la conformation du compte courant un agent economique prive composite qui traite son portefeuille de dettes nettes du gouvernement federal comme richesse nette va accumuler la somme de ces dettes et des dettes nettes des non residents dans le cadre de son plan intertemporel optimal les resultats montrent que la politique fiscale et des considerations intertemporelles sont des elements determinants du comportement du compte courant

credit traps and credit cycles we develop a simple macroeconomic model of credit market imperfections with heterogeneous investment projects the projects differ in productivity the investment requirement and the severity of agency problems behind the borrowing constraints a movement in borrower net worth shifts the composition of the credit between projects with different productivity levels thereby causing endogenous investment specific technological change furthermore such endogenous technological change in turn affects borrower net worth these composition effects could give rise to credit traps credit collapse leapfrogging credit cycles and growth miracles in the dynamics of the aggregate investment and borrower net worth jel e22 e44 o33

on the amplification role of collateral constraints abstract this letter explores the role of costly liquidation of the collateralized asset in a stochastic version of the kiyotaki and moore 1997 model we document that the degree of inefficiency in the debt enforcement procedure plays a key role in the endogenous amplification of productivity shocks generated by collateral constraints

green fiscal reform in sweden econometric assessment of the carbon and energy taxation scheme abstract empirical econometric assessment of environmental policy effectiveness is capable of demonstrating which tools have been helping to achieve the desired effect of reducing harmful emissions or stimulating technological change this paper employs an econometric approach to analyse the effectiveness of energy and carbon taxes in sweden the country which was one of the first to introduce a co2 tax as well as an extensive environmental tax reform the results showed that taken in isolation a co2 tax was not sufficient to result in a significant change in co2 emissions in sweden except in the case of petrol on the other hand energy taxes for coal and lpg have been statistically significantly effective it was also clear that a technological innovation in the form of development of nuclear and hydro energy played a significant role in reducing co2 emissions and higher oil price was also important in reducing national co2 emissions in sweden at the same time renewable energy excluding hydro a more recent innovation has not been a statistically significant driver of co2 emissions reduction perhaps due to the fact that wind and solar play a much lesser role in sweden at the moment the net electricity imports from other countries have contributed positively towards reducing co2 emissions in sweden while the use of coal and biomass tended to increase co2 emissions compared to the ex ante modelling results from the literature review the findings confirm the role of environmental taxation as a viable policy instrument effective in reducing co2 emissions in sweden although point towards a more nuanced picture the paper raises important policy questions focused on the effectiveness of environmental policy tools

taxation of multiple greenhouse gases and the effects on income distribution a case study of the netherlands current economic instruments aimed at climate change mitigation focus on co2 emissions only but the kyoto protocol refers to other greenhouse gases ghg as well as co2 these are ch4 n2o hfcs pfcs and sf6 taxation of multiple greenhouse gases improves the cost effectiveness of climate change mitigation it is not yet clear however what the effect is of multigas taxation on the distribution of the tax burden across income groups this paper examines and compares distributional effects of a co2 tax and a comprehensive tax that covers all six ghg of the kyoto protocol the study concentrates on the netherlands in the year 2000 we established tax rates on the basis of marginal abatement cost curves and the dutch policy target the distributional effects have been determined by means of environmentally extended input output analysis and data on consumer expenditures our results show that taxation of multiple ghg improves not only the cost effectiveness of climate change mitigation but also distributes the tax burden more equally across income groups as compared to a co2 tax these findings are relevant for the debate on the role of non co2 ghg in climate change mitigation

testing a present value model of the current account evidence from us and canadian time series abstract this paper presents a simple model of current account determination based upon the permanent income hypothesis of private consumption behavior under rational expectations the model employs a representative national agent who is forward looking and can borrow and lend at a constant world interest rate a present value relationship for the current account is derived and its implications are tested on post war data for the united states and canada testing is done using the framework developed by campbell and shiller 1987 which allows the forcing variables in the model to be difference rather than trend stationary our empirical results indicate the most stringent restrictions of the present value model are strongly rejected by the us and canadian data however less formal procedures suggest the consumption smoothing model has some ability to track the dynamic behavior of the us current account jel f32

energy related taxation as an environmental policy tool the finnish experience 1990 2003 abstract finland has over 10 years experience of environment based energy taxation the design and level of the co 2 and energy tax scheme has been changed several times on an ad hoc basis in recent years finland has introduced more and more tax departures i e deviations and exceptions from an ideal type of environmental tax examples of this include fuel specific and user specific exemptions or lowered tax levels taxes on electricity production from non fossil energy sources plus refund systems for fossil fuel and electricity users thus it is apparent that finnish energy taxation aimed at improving the environment has developed ineffectively increases in the level of co 2 tax on fossil fuels have served mostly fiscal purposes with reduced co 2 emissions being only a side benefit no systematic follow up or ex post analysis on the impacts of the co 2 and energy taxes has been carried out from the perspective of greenhouse gas mitigation the discussion on economic instruments has shifted from co 2 taxation towards emissions trading in the international context of the european union and the kyoto protocol

the welfare effects and the distributive impact of carbon taxation on italian households in this work the welfare effects and the distributive impact on italian households of the italian carbon tax are calculated the carbon tax has been introduced in italy at the beginning of 1999 asking for smooth increases over a number of years in the prices of most fossil fuels its welfare effects have been calculated using true cost of living index numbers and the compensating variation the parameters have been obtained through estimation of a complete almost ideal demand system using households data from 1985 to 1996 the welfare loss turns out to be quite substantial and affects italian households in a non negligible way but the distribution of welfare losses across different levels of total monthly expenditures does not allow sustaining the regressivity of carbon taxation as the effect becomes bigger as we move up the income distribution this evidence might encourage the use of carbon taxes at least in the transport sector as cost effective instruments of environmental policy especially after the ratification of the kyoto protocol on climate change

the effect of financial development on convergence theory and evidence we introduce imperfect creditor protection in a multicountry schumpeterian growth model the theory predicts that any country with more than some critical level of financial development will converge to the growth rate of the world technology frontier and that all other countries will have a strictly lower long run growth rate we present evidence supporting these and other implications in the form of a cross country growth regression with a significant and sizable negative coefficient on initial per capita gdp relative to the united states interacted with financial intermediation in addition we find that other variables representing schooling geography health policy politics and institutions do not affect the significance of the interaction between financial intermediation and initial per capita gdp and do not show any independent effect on convergence in the regressions our findings are robust to removal of outliers and to alternative conditioning sets estimation procedures and measures of financial development

present value tests of an intertemporal model of the current account abstract this paper first demonstrates that in a simple intertemporal open economy model the current account is equal to the expected decline of the present discounted value of net output of a country net output is defined as gross domestic product less the sum of investment plus government spending it then uses econometric methods for present value models to analyze the current account for four countries in two of these countries the model does a satisfactory job of explaining the current account

equitably slicing the pie water policy and allocation abstract non point source pollution is deteriorating water quality throughout the world new zealand is addressing this issue by regulating land based nutrient losses with debates over how to allocate limits across a heterogeneous landscape we develop a spatially explicit economic land use model to investigate efficiency and equity issues from seven approaches to allocate nutrient discharges across two new zealand watersheds we find that the preferred allocation differs across land use land characteristics and regulation stringency and that there is no universal best allocation option therefore decision makers should focus on at least efficiency and equity and on how to compensate those most affected