IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpe/jtecpo/v39y2005i1p1-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Equity Implications of Vehicle Emissions Taxes

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah E. West

Abstract

This paper considers the equity implications of vehicle emissions taxes by examining the incidence of a tax on local pollutants. It uses emissions data from the California Air Resources Board and household vehicle and income data from the US Consumer Expenditure Survey. It incorporates household price responsiveness that differs across income groups into a consumer surplus measure of tax burden. Since poor vehicle owners spend more on miles as a proportion of their income and drive vehicles that pollute more per mile than those owned by the wealthy, the incidence of tax on vehicle emissions falls relatively heavily on them. This burden, however, is mitigated to some extent by low vehicle ownership rates and high price responsiveness in the lower half of the income distribution. A uniform tax on miles that does not distinguish between dirty and clean vehicles is less regressive than the emissions tax. © 2005 LSE and the University of Bath

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah E. West, 2005. "Equity Implications of Vehicle Emissions Taxes," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 39(1), pages 1-24, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpe:jtecpo:v:39:y:2005:i:1:p:1-24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.catchword.com/cgi-bin/cgi?ini=bc&body=linker&reqidx=0022-5258(20050101)39:1L.1;1-
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ke, Yue & McMullen, B. Starr, 2017. "Regional differences in the determinants of Oregon VMT," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 2-10.
    2. Christopher R. Knittel & Ryan Sandler, 2013. "The Welfare Impact of Indirect Pigouvian Taxation: Evidence from Transportation," NBER Working Papers 18849, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Tovar Reaños, Miguel A. & Sommerfeld, Katrin, 2018. "Fuel for inequality: Distributional effects of environmental reforms on private transport," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 28-43.
    4. Parry, Ian W.H. & Sigman, Hilary & Walls, Margaret & Williams, Roberton C., III, 2005. "The Incidence of Pollution Control Policies," Discussion Papers 10651, Resources for the Future.
    5. Rafael Aigner, 2014. "Environmental Taxation and Redistribution Concerns," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 70(2), pages 249-277, June.
    6. Silvia Tiezzi & Stefano F. Verde, 2019. "The signaling effect of gasoline taxes and its distributional implications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(2), pages 145-169, June.
    7. Chi-Chur Chao & Jean-Pierre Laffargue & Pasquale M. Sgro, 2012. "Tariff and environmental policies with product standards," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 45(3), pages 978-995, August.
    8. Gruber, Robert, 2012. "Evaluation of the effectiveness of the German Federal Government with respect to sustainable mobility: Analyse rechtlicher, fiskalpolitischer und softer Maßnahmen auf Bundesebene," Wuppertaler Studienarbeiten zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, volume 4, number 4.
    9. Tovar Reaños, Miguel A. & Lynch, Muireann Á., 2022. "Measuring carbon tax incidence using a fully flexible demand system. Vertical and horizontal effects using Irish data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    10. Starr McMullen, B. & Zhang, Lei & Nakahara, Kyle, 2010. "Distributional impacts of changing from a gasoline tax to a vehicle-mile tax for light vehicles: A case study of Oregon," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 359-366, November.
    11. Silvia Tiezzi & Stefano F. Verde, 2019. "The signaling effect of gasoline taxes and its distributional implications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(2), pages 145-169, June.
    12. Silvia Tiezzi & Stefano F. Verde, 2017. "The signaling effect of gasoline taxes and its distributional implications," RSCAS Working Papers 2017/06, European University Institute.
    13. Yasser Ammar AL-Rawi & Mohammed Harith Imlus & Yusri Yusup & Sofri Bin Yahya, 2018. "The Optimal Progressive Tax Policy to Reduced Vehicles Externalities," Journal of Asian Scientific Research, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 8(8), pages 265-276, August.
    14. Berri, Akli & Vincent Lyk-Jensen, Stéphanie & Mulalic, Ismir & Zachariadis, Theodoros, 2014. "Household transport consumption inequalities and redistributive effects of taxes: A repeated cross-sectional evaluation for France, Denmark and Cyprus," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 206-216.
    15. England, Richard W., 2007. "Motor fuel taxation, energy conservation, and economic development: A regional approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2-3), pages 409-416, March.
    16. Tovar Reaños, Miguel A. & Wölfing, Nikolas M., 2018. "Household energy prices and inequality: Evidence from German microdata based on the EASI demand system," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 84-97.
    17. Tovar Reanos, Miguel, 2020. "Car ownership and the distributional and environmental policies to reduce driving behavior," Papers WP673, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    18. Adekunle Mofolasayo, 2023. "Assessing and Managing the Direct and Indirect Emissions from Electric and Fossil-Powered Vehicles," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-33, January.
    19. Wu, Sanmang & Li, Shantong & Lei, Yalin & Li, Li, 2020. "Temporal changes in China's production and consumption-based CO2 emissions and the factors contributing to changes," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    20. Berri, Akli & Vincent Lyk-Jensen, Stéphanie & Mulalic, Ismir & Zachariadis, Theodoros, 2014. "Household transport consumption inequalities and redistributive effects of taxes: A repeated cross-sectional evaluation for France, Denmark and Cyprus," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 206-216.
    21. McMullen, B. Starr & Zhang, Lei, 2007. "Is A Vehicle-Mile Tax a Viable Alternative to the Gasoline Tax? A Review of Socio-Economics and Distributional Considerations," 48th Annual Transportation Research Forum, Boston, Massachusetts, March 15-17, 2007 207933, Transportation Research Forum.
    22. Yang, Di & Kastrouni, Eirini & Zhang, Lei, 2016. "Equitable and progressive distance-based user charges design and evaluation of income-based mileage fees in Maryland," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 169-177.
    23. Tovar Reaños, Miguel A., 2020. "Initial incidence of carbon taxes and environmental liability. A vehicle ownership approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    24. Tovar Reaños, Miguel A., 2021. "Floods, flood policies and changes in welfare and inequality: Evidence from Germany," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    25. Yasser A. Al-Rawi & Mohammed Harith Imlus & Yusri Yusup & Sofri Bin Yahya, 2021. "Factors affecting vehicle exhaust emissions, driver motivations as a mediator," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(2), pages 361-407, April.

    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:tpe:jtecpo:v:39:y:2005:i:1:p:1-24. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-journals/jtep .

    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.