IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/rffdps/10805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Should Fuel Taxes Be Scrapped in Favor of Per-Mile Charges?

Author

Listed:
  • Parry, Ian W.H.

Abstract

This paper discusses the appropriate balance between traditional gasoline taxes and charging by the mile, focusing mainly on economic efficiency considerations. We begin with a brief discussion of the five major passenger vehicle externalities of concern-local pollution, greenhouse warming, oil dependency, traffic congestion, and traffic accidents-summarizing evidence on the dollar value of the externalities for passenger vehicles in the United States. We then discuss how much fuel taxation might be justified to account for these externalities, as well as how much taxation might be appropriate on fiscal grounds, assuming per-mile charges are unavailable. Finally, we discuss to what extent fuel taxation should be replaced with per-mile charges.

Suggested Citation

  • Parry, Ian W.H., 2005. "Should Fuel Taxes Be Scrapped in Favor of Per-Mile Charges?," Discussion Papers 10805, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:rffdps:10805
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.10805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/10805/files/dp050036.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.10805?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Pearce, 2003. "The Social Cost of Carbon and its Policy Implications," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(3), pages 362-384.
    2. Lawrence H. Goulder & Ian W.H. Parry & Dallas Burtraw, 2002. "Revenue-Raising versus Other Approaches to Environmental Protection: The Critical Significance of Preexisting Tax Distortions," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 24, pages 447-470, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Ian W. H. Parry & Kenneth A. Small, 2005. "Does Britain or the United States Have the Right Gasoline Tax?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1276-1289, September.
    4. Sarah E. West & Roberton C. Williams, 2004. "Empirical Estimates for Environmental Policy Making in a Second-Best Setting," NBER Working Papers 10330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Lawrence H. Goulder & Ian W. H. Parry & Dallas Burtraw, 1996. "Revenue-Raising vs. Other Approaches to Environmental Protection: The Critical Significance of Pre-Existing Tax Distortions," NBER Working Papers 5641, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Lin, C.-Y. Cynthia & Prince, Lea, 2009. "The optimal gas tax for California," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5173-5183, December.
    2. Hahn, Robert & Passell, Peter, 2010. "The economics of allowing more U.S. oil drilling," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 638-650, May.

    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. Ian W. H. Parry & Kenneth A. Small, 2005. "Does Britain or the United States Have the Right Gasoline Tax?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1276-1289, September.
    2. Ian W. H. Parry, 2003. "Fiscal Interactions and the Case for Carbon Taxes Over Grandfathered Carbon Permits," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 19(3), pages 385-399.
    3. Don Fullerton & Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2002. "Environmental Controls, Scarcity Rents, and Pre-existing Distortions," Chapters, in: Lawrence H. Goulder (ed.), Environmental Policy Making in Economies with Prior Tax Distortions, chapter 26, pages 504-522, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Don Fullerton & Inkee Hong & Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2001. "A Tax on Output of the Polluting Industry Is Not a Tax on Pollution: The Importance of Hitting the Target," NBER Chapters, in: Behavioral and Distributional Effects of Environmental Policy, pages 13-44, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Ian W.H. Parry, 2005. "Fiscal Interactions and the Costs of Controlling Pollution from Electricity," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 849-869, Winter.
    6. Fischer, Carolyn & Fox, Alan, 2004. "Output-Based Allocations of Emissions Permits: Efficiency and Distributional Effects in a General Equilibrium Setting with Taxes and Trade," RFF Working Paper Series dp-04-37, Resources for the Future.
    7. Curtis Carlson & Dallas Burtraw & Maureen Cropper & Karen L. Palmer, 2000. "Sulfur Dioxide Control by Electric Utilities: What Are the Gains from Trade?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(6), pages 1292-1326, December.
    8. Gilbert Metcalf & David Weisbach, 2008. "The Design of a Carbon Tax," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0727, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    9. Parry, Ian W.H., 2007. "Are the costs of reducing greenhouse gases from passenger vehicles negative?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 273-293, September.
    10. Ian Parry, 2001. "The Costs of Restrictive Trade Policies in the Presence of Factor Tax Distortions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(2), pages 147-170, March.
    11. Jean-Christophe Caffet, 2005. "Health effects and optimal environmental taxes in welfare state countries," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques v05049, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    12. Stavins, Robert, 2003. "Market-Based Environmental Policies: What Can We Learn from U.S. Experience and Related Research?," Working Paper Series rwp03-031, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    13. Parry, Ian W.H. & Fischer, Carolyn & Harrington, Winston, 2004. "Should Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards Be Tightened?," Discussion Papers 10605, Resources for the Future.
    14. Simon Dietz & Samuel Fankhauser, 2010. "Environmental prices, uncertainty, and learning," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 26(2), pages 270-284, Summer.
    15. Thomas Sadler, 2001. "Environmental taxation in an optimal tax framework," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 29(2), pages 215-231, June.
    16. Rutherford, Thomas F. & Böhringer, Christoph, 2002. "In Search of a Rationale for Differentiated Environmental Taxes," ZEW Discussion Papers 02-30, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. Parry, Ian W. H., 2004. "Are emissions permits regressive?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 364-387, March.
    18. Carolyn Fischer, 2003. "Combining rate-based and cap-and-trade emissions policies," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(sup2), pages 89-103, December.
    19. Sarah E. West & Roberton C. Williams III, 2005. "The Cost of Reducing Gasoline Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 294-299, May.
    20. Fullerton, Don & Metcalf, Gilbert E., 2002. "Cap and trade policies in the presence of monopoly and distortionary taxation," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 327-347, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public Economics;

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • R48 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - Government Pricing and Policy

    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:ags:rffdps:10805. 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: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.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.