IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v114y2012i2p409-415.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Leviathan carbon taxes in the short run

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Tol

Abstract

A cap is imposed on the carbon tax rate if the total tax revenue is not allowed to increase. Using recent data on the carbon-intensity of the economy and the overall tax take, I show that this cap constrains almost any climate policy in at least some countries. A larger number of countries, emitting a substantial share of global carbon dioxide, cannot fully participate if the carbon tax (or equivalent alternative regulation) is high enough to meet the 2 °C target. For that target, the carbon tax revenue in 2020 is greater than 10 % of total tax revenue in every country. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Tol, 2012. "Leviathan carbon taxes in the short run," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 409-415, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:114:y:2012:i:2:p:409-415
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-012-0544-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10584-012-0544-z
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-012-0544-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rausch Sebastian & Metcalf Gilbert E. & Reilly John M & Paltsev Sergey, 2010. "Distributional Implications of Alternative U.S. Greenhouse Gas Control Measures," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(2), pages 1-46, July.
    2. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre & Rochet, Jean-Charles, 2001. "Direct versus Indirect Taxation: The Design of the Tax Structure Revisted," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(3), pages 781-799, August.
    3. Robert Ayres & Jörg Walter, 1991. "The greenhouse effect: Damages, costs and abatement," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 1(3), pages 237-270, September.
    4. Romero-Ávila, Diego, 2008. "Convergence in carbon dioxide emissions among industrialised countries revisited," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 2265-2282, September.
    5. Ackerman, Frank & Stanton, Elizabeth A. & Bueno, Ramón, 2010. "Fat tails, exponents, extreme uncertainty: Simulating catastrophe in DICE," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(8), pages 1657-1665, June.
    6. Carson, Richard T. & Louviere, Jordan J. & Wei, Edward, 2010. "Alternative Australian climate change plans: The public's views," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 902-911, February.
    7. Baumol, William J, 1972. "On Taxation and the Control of Externalities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(3), pages 307-322, June.
    8. Martin L. Weitzman, 2009. "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19, February.
    9. William J. Baumol & Wallace E. Oates, 1971. "The Use of Standards and Prices for Protection of the Environment," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Bohm & Allen V. Kneese (ed.), The Economics of Environment, pages 53-65, Palgrave Macmillan.
    10. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75.
    11. Liddle, Brantley, 2010. "Revisiting world energy intensity convergence for regional differences," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 87(10), pages 3218-3225, October.
    12. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Anthoff & Richard S. J. Tol, 2022. "Testing the Dismal Theorem," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(5), pages 885-920.
    2. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    3. Richard S. J. Tol, 2014. "Ambiguity Reduction by Objective Model Selection, with an Application to the Costs of the EU 2030 Climate Targets," Energies, MDPI, vol. 7(11), pages 1-11, October.
    4. Carraro, Carlo & Favero, Alice & Massetti, Emanuele, 2012. "“Investments and public finance in a green, low carbon, economy”," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(S1), pages 15-28.
    5. Richard S. J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have increased over time," Papers 2105.03656, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    6. Richard S.J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have not changed over time," Working Paper Series 0821, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Tol, 2012. "Maximum Carbon Taxes in the Short Run," Working Paper Series 3312, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    2. Kopp, Robert E. & Mignone, Bryan K., 2012. "The US government's social cost of carbon estimates after their first two years: Pathways for improvement," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 6, pages 1-41.
    3. Kopp, Robert E. & Golub, Alexander & Keohane, Nathaniel O. & Onda, Chikara, 2012. "The influence of the specification of climate change damages on the social cost of carbon," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 6, pages 1-40.
    4. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    5. Francesco Lamperti & Giovanni Dosi & Mauro Napoletano & Andrea Roventini & Alessandro Sapio, 2018. "And then he wasn't a she : Climate change and green transitions in an agent-based integrated assessment model," Working Papers hal-03443464, HAL.
    6. Seth D. Baum & Timothy M. Maher & Jacob Haqq-Misra, 2013. "Double catastrophe: intermittent stratospheric geoengineering induced by societal collapse," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 168-180, March.
    7. Dietz, Simon, 2012. "The treatment of risk and uncertainty in the US social cost of carbon for regulatory impact analysis," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 6, pages 1-12.
    8. Simon Dietz, 2011. "The treatment of risk and uncertainty in the US Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis," GRI Working Papers 54, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    9. Nordhaus, William, 2013. "Integrated Economic and Climate Modeling," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 1069-1131, Elsevier.
    10. Pezzey, John C.V. & Burke, Paul J., 2014. "Towards a more inclusive and precautionary indicator of global sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 141-154.
    11. Rezai, Armon & Taylor, Lance & Mechler, Reinhard, 2013. "Ecological macroeconomics: An application to climate change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 69-76.
    12. Ikefuji, Masako & Laeven, Roger J.A. & Magnus, Jan R. & Muris, Chris, 2020. "Expected utility and catastrophic risk in a stochastic economy–climate model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 214(1), pages 110-129.
    13. Nicolas Taconet & Céline Guivarch & Antonin Pottier, 2019. "Social Cost of Carbon under stochastic tipping points: when does risk play a role?," Working Papers hal-02408904, HAL.
    14. Nicholas Stern, 2013. "The Structure of Economic Modeling of the Potential Impacts of Climate Change: Grafting Gross Underestimation of Risk onto Already Narrow Science Models," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 838-859, September.
    15. Kounetas, Konstantinos & Zervopoulos, Panagiotis D., 2019. "A cross-country evaluation of environmental performance: Is there a convergence-divergence pattern in technology gaps?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(3), pages 1136-1148.
    16. Dietz, Simon, 2011. "The treatment of risk and uncertainty in the US social cost of carbon for regulatory impact analysis," Economics Discussion Papers 2011-30, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    17. Aurélie Méjean & Antonin Pottier & Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2020. "Catastrophic climate change, population ethics and intergenerational equity," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 873-890, November.
    18. Lamperti, F. & Dosi, G. & Napoletano, M. & Roventini, A. & Sapio, A., 2018. "Faraway, So Close: Coupled Climate and Economic Dynamics in an Agent-based Integrated Assessment Model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 315-339.
    19. Tsigaris, Panagiotis & Wood, Joel, 2019. "The potential impacts of climate change on capital in the 21st century," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 74-86.
    20. Samuel Jovan Okullo, 2020. "Determining the Social Cost of Carbon: Under Damage and Climate Sensitivity Uncertainty," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(1), pages 79-103, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:114:y:2012:i:2:p:409-415. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.