IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/2009v30-02-a08.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Kevin A. Hassett
  • Aparna Mathur
  • Gilbert E. Metcalf

Abstract

This paper measures the direct and indirect incidence of a carbon tax using current income and two measures of lifetime income to rank households. Our results suggest that carbon taxes are more regressive when annual income is used as a measure of economic welfare than when lifetime income measures are used. Further, the direct component of the tax, in any given year, is significantly more regressive than the indirect component. We observe a modest shift over time with the direct component of carbon taxes becoming less regressive and the indirect component becoming more regressive. These effects mostly offset each other and the distribution of the total tax burden has not changed much over time. In addition we find that regional variation has fluctuated over the years of our analysis. By 2003 there is little systematic variation in carbon tax burdens across regions of the country.

Suggested Citation

  • Kevin A. Hassett & Aparna Mathur & Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2009. "The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax: A Lifetime and Regional Analysis," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 155-178.
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:2009v30-02-a08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2309
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of Energy Intensity and Its Determinants at the State Level," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 1-26.
    2. Sergey Paltsev & John M. Reilly & Henry D. Jacoby & Angelo C. Gurgel & Gilbert E. Metcalf & Andrei P. Sokolov & Jennifer F. Holak, 2007. "Assessment of U.S. Cap-and-Trade Proposals," NBER Working Papers 13176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Sergey Paltsev & John Reilly, 2007. "Long-Term Energy Scenarios for Asia," Energy and Environmental Modeling 2007 24000047, EcoMod.
    2. Löschel, Andreas & Pothen, Frank & Schymura, Michael, 2015. "Peeling the onion: Analyzing aggregate, national and sectoral energy intensity in the European Union," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(S1), pages 63-75.
    3. Horowitz, Marvin J. & Bertoldi, Paolo, 2015. "A harmonized calculation model for transforming EU bottom-up energy efficiency indicators into empirical estimates of policy impacts," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 135-148.
    4. Arik Levinson, 2009. "Technology, International Trade, and Pollution from US Manufacturing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2177-2192, December.
    5. Borozan, Djula, 2018. "Technical and total factor energy efficiency of European regions: A two-stage approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 521-532.
    6. Atalla, Tarek & Bean, Patrick, 2017. "Determinants of energy productivity in 39 countries: An empirical investigation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 217-229.
    7. Joseph E. Aldy & William A. Pizer, 2009. "Issues in Designing U.S. Climate Change Policy," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 179-210.
    8. Arik Levinson, 2016. "How Much Energy Do Building Energy Codes Save? Evidence from California Houses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 2867-2894, October.
    9. Webster, Mort & Sue Wing, Ian & Jakobovits, Lisa, 2010. "Second-best instruments for near-term climate policy: Intensity targets vs. the safety valve," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 250-259, May.
    10. Karimu, Amin & Brännlund, Runar & Lundgren, Tommy & Söderholm, Patrik, 2017. "Energy intensity and convergence in Swedish industry: A combined econometric and decomposition analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 347-356.
    11. Olympia Bover & Natalia Fabra & Sandra García-Uribe & Aitor Lacuesta & Roberto Ramos, 2020. "Firms and households during the pandemic: what do we learn from their electricity consumption?," Occasional Papers 2031, Banco de España.
    12. Arik Levinson, 2017. "Energy Intensity: Prices, Policy, or Composition in US States," Working Papers gueconwpa~17-17-04, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    13. Jean Fouré & Agnès Bénassy-Quéré & Lionel Fontagné, 2012. "The Great Shift : Macroeconomic projections For the World Economy at the 2050 Horizon," Working Papers hal-00962464, HAL.
    14. Leal, Patrícia Hipólito & Marques, António Cardoso, 2020. "Rediscovering the EKC hypothesis for the 20 highest CO2 emitters among OECD countries by level of globalization," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 36-47.
    15. Jonathan T. Hawkins-Pierot & Katherine R. H. Wagner, 2022. "Technology Lock-In and Optimal Carbon Pricing," CESifo Working Paper Series 9762, CESifo.
    16. Rabindra Nepal & Tooraj Jamasb & Clement Allan Tisdell, 2013. "Market-Related Reforms and Increased Energy Efficiency in Transition Countries: Empirical Evidence," Energy Economics and Management Group Working Papers 8-2013, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    17. Lutsey, Nicholas P., 2008. "Prioritizing Climate Change Mitigation Alternatives: Comparing Transportation Technologies to Options in Other Sectors," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt5rd41433, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    18. Ma, Chunbo, 2014. "A multi-fuel, multi-sector and multi-region approach to index decomposition: An application to China's energy consumption 1995–2010," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 9-16.
    19. Akbar Ullah & Karim Khan & Munazza Akhtar, 2014. "Energy Intensity: A Decomposition Exercise for Pakistan," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 53(4), pages 531-549.
    20. Gilbert E. Metcalf and Catherine Wolfram, 2015. "Cursed Resources? Political Conditions and Oil Market Outcomes," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    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:aen:journl:2009v30-02-a08. 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: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    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.