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The General Equilibrium Incidence of Environmental Taxes

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  • Don Fullerton
  • Garth Heutel

Abstract

We study the distributional effects of a pollution tax in general equilibrium, with general forms of substitution where pollution might be a relative complement or substitute for labor or for capital in production. We find closed form solutions for pollution, output prices, and factor prices. Various special cases help clarify the impact of differential factor intensities, substitution effects, and output effects. Intuitively, the pollution tax might place disproportionate burdens on capital if the polluting sector is capital intensive, or if labor is a better substitute for pollution than is capital; however, conditions are found where these intuitive results do not hold. We show exact conditions for the wage to rise relative to the capital return. Plausible values are then assigned to all the parameters, and we find that variations over the possible range of factor intensities have less impact than variations over the possible range of elasticities.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11311.

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Date of creation: May 2005
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11311

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Bovenberg, A.L. & Goulder, L.H. & Jacobson, M.R., 2006. "Costs of Alternative Environmental Policy Instruments in the Presence of Industry Compensation Requirements," Discussion Paper 2006-127, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
  2. Dorothée Boccanfuso & Antonio Estache & Luc Savard, 2009. "Distributional impact of developed countries CC policies on Senegal : A macro-micro CGE application," Cahiers de recherche 09-11, Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke.
  3. Don Fullerton, 2008. "Distributional Effects of Environmental and Energy Policy: An Introduction," NBER Working Papers 14241, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Dorothee Boccanfuso & Antonio Estache & Luc Savard, 2011. "The Intra-country Distributional Impact of Policies to Fight Climate Change: A Survey," The Journal of Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 47(1), pages 97-117.
  5. Ian Parry & Hilary Sigman & Margaret Walls & Roberton Williams, 2005. "The Incidence of Pollution Control Policies," Departmental Working Papers 200504, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
  6. Ujjayant Chakravorty & Marie-Hélène Hubert & Michel Moreaux & Linda Nøstbakken, 2012. "Do Biofuel Mandates Raise Food Prices?," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 201214, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
  7. Don Fullerton & Garth Heutel, 2010. "The General Equilibrium Incidence of Environmental Mandates," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 64-89, August.
  8. Abdelkrim Araar & Yazid Dissou & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2008. "Household Incidence of Pollution Control Policies: A Robust Welfare Analysis Using General Equilibrium Effects," Working Papers 0805E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
  9. Don Fullerton & Daniel Karney & Kathy Baylis, 2011. "Negative Leakage," NBER Working Papers 17001, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. López, Ramón & Palacios, Amparo, 2011. "Why Europe has become environmentally cleaner: Decomposing the roles of fiscal, trade and environmental policies," CEPR Discussion Papers 8551, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  11. Heutel, Garth, 2011. "Plant vintages, grandfathering, and environmental policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 36-51, January.
  12. Corbett Grainger & Charles Kolstad, 2010. "Who Pays a Price on Carbon?," Environmental & Resource Economics, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 46(3), pages 359-376, July.
  13. Dorothée Boccanfuso & Antonio Estache & Luc Savard, 2008. "Intra-Country Distributional Impact of Policies to Fight Climate Change: A Survey," Working Papers ECARES 2008_038, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
  14. Coxhead, Ian & Chan, Nguyen Van, 2011. "Vietnam's New Environmental Tax Law: What Will It Cost? Who Will Pay?," Staff Paper Series 561, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
  15. Lopez, Ramon E. & Palacios, Amparo, 2010. "Have Government Spending and Energy Tax Policies Contributed to make Europe Environmentally Cleaner?," Working Papers 94795, University of Maryland, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
  16. Dorothée Boccanfuso & Antonio Estache & Luc Savard, 2008. "Distributional impact of global warming environmental policies: A survey," Cahiers de recherche 08-14, Departement d'Economique de la Faculte d'administration à l'Universite de Sherbrooke.

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