This paper uses stylized analytical and numerical general equilibrium models to evaluate the welfare impacts of alternative policies for reducing nitrogen run-off from agricultural production in an open economy while recognizing the presence of distortionary agricultural support subsidies and factor income taxes. The alternative policies examined here are a nitrogen run-off tax, a nitrogen run-off reduction subsidy, a tax on the production of agricultural goods, a "two-part" instrument - a combination of the second and the third policies, and land retirement. The paper uses an analytical model to express the welfare impacts of each policy into several components and compares these components across alternative policies. From the analytical model the paper concludes that all alternative policies, except land retirement, may generate a double dividend because they reduce the provision of distortionary agricultural support subsidies and because a part of the burden of these policies can be passed on to foreign consumers of agricultural products through the world market. The numerical results indicate that all policies, except for land retirement, generate some welfare gains at low levels of nitrogen reduction targets in the first and second best settings when nitrogen and other inputs are substitutable. Gains are higher in the second best setting. As the level of nitrogen reduction increases, all policies become costly and they impose net welfare costs. These costs are higher in the second best setting. The numerical results also indicate that the relative efficiency of alternative policies is sensitive to the level of nitrogen reduction target.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association) in its series 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI with number
19317.
Length: Date of creation: 2005 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea05:19317
Contact details of provider: Postal: 555 East Wells Street, Suite 1100, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Phone: (414) 918-3190 Fax: (414) 276-3349 Email: Web page: http://www.aaea.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (AgEcon Search).
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Don Fullerton & Andrew Leicester & Stephen Smith, 2008.
"Environmental Taxes,"
NBER Working Papers
14197, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)