IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ekd/002596/259600155.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Border Tax Adjustments to Negate the Economic Impact of an Electricity Generation Tax

Author

Listed:
  • Reyno SEYMORE
  • Margaret MABUGU
  • Jan VAN HEERDEN

Abstract

In the 2008 Budget Review, the South African government announced its intention to levy a 2c/kWh tax on the sale of electricity generated from non-renewable sources. This measure is intended to serve a dual purpose of helping to manage the current electricity supply shortages and to protect the environment (National Treasury 2008). An electricity generation tax is set to have an impact on the South African economy. However, several instruments have been proposed in the literature to protect the competitiveness and economy of a country when it imposes a green tax, one of these remedies being border tax adjustments.This paper evaluates the effectiveness for the South African case, of border tax adjustments (BTAs) in counteracting the negative impact of an electricity generation tax on competitiveness. The remedial effects of the BTAs are assessed in the light of their ability to maintain the environmental benefits of the electricity generation tax. Additionally, the the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model is used to evaluate the impact of an electricity generation tax on the South African, SACU and SADC economies and to explore the possibility of reducing the economic impact of the electricity generation tax through BTAs. The results show that an electricity generation tax will lead to a contraction in South African gross domestic product (GDP). Traditional BTAs are unable to address these negative impacts. We propose a reversedBTA approach where gains from trade are utilised to counteract the negative effects of an electricity generation tax, while retaining the environmental benefits associated with the electricity generation tax. This is achieved through a lowering of import tariffs, as this will reduce production costs and thereby restore the competitiveness of the South African economy. The reduction in import tariffs not only negates the negative GDP impact of the electricity generation tax, but the bulk of CO2 abatement from the electricity generation ta
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Reyno SEYMORE & Margaret MABUGU & Jan VAN HEERDEN, 2010. "Border Tax Adjustments to Negate the Economic Impact of an Electricity Generation Tax," EcoMod2010 259600155, EcoMod.
  • Handle: RePEc:ekd:002596:259600155
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecomod.net/sites/default/files/document-conference/ecomod2010/1167.doc
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Kimball, Miles S, 1990. "Precautionary Saving in the Small and in the Large," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 53-73, January.
    3. Zeldes, Stephen P, 1989. "Consumption and Liquidity Constraints: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(2), pages 305-346, April.
    4. Ismer, R. & Neuhoff, K., 2004. "Border Tax Adjustments: A feasible way to address nonparticipation in Emission Trading," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0409, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    5. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "The equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 401-421, November.
    6. Lucas, Deborah J., 1994. "Asset pricing with undiversifiable income risk and short sales constraints: Deepening the equity premium puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 325-341, December.
    7. Aiyagari, S. Rao & Gertler, Mark, 1991. "Asset returns with transactions costs and uninsured individual risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 311-331, June.
    8. Cogley, Timothy, 2002. "Idiosyncratic risk and the equity premium: evidence from the consumer expenditure survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 309-334, March.
    9. Gordon S. & St-Amour P., 2004. "Asset Returns and State-Dependent Risk Preferences," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 22, pages 241-252, July.
    10. Narayana Kocherlakota & Luigi Pistaferri, 2009. "Asset Pricing Implications of Pareto Optimality with Private Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(3), pages 555-590, June.
    11. Christophe Courbage & Béatrice Rey, 2007. "Precautionary saving in the presence of other risks," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(2), pages 417-424, August.
    12. Attanasio, Orazio P & Weber, Guglielmo, 1995. "Is Consumption Growth Consistent with Intertemporal Optimization? Evidence from the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(6), pages 1121-1157, December.
    13. Alon Brav & George M. Constantinides & Christopher C. Geczy, 2002. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and Limited Participation: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 793-824, August.
    14. Hansen, Lars Peter & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1991. "Implications of Security Market Data for Models of Dynamic Economies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 225-262, April.
    15. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    16. Christopher D. Carroll, 1994. "How does Future Income Affect Current Consumption?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(1), pages 111-147.
    17. Christophe Courbage & Béatrice Rey, 2007. "Precautionary saving in the presence of other risks," Post-Print halshs-03353387, HAL.
    18. Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1986. "The equity premium and the concentration of aggregate shocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 211-219, September.
    19. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 339-357, April.
    20. Nachman, David C., 1982. "Preservation of "more risk averse" under expectations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 361-368, December.
    21. Meade, James E, 1974. "A Note on Border-Tax Adjustments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(5), pages 1013-1015, Sept./Oct.
    22. S. Ssekabira Ntege & C. Harmse, 2003. "Are Prices Sticky Downwards? The Effect Of Trade Liberalisation On South Africa'S Wine Industry," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 71(4), pages 729-761, December.
    23. S Roberts, 2000. "Understanding the Effects of Trade Policy Reform: The Case of South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 68(4), pages 270-281, December.
    24. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002. "Limited Asset Market Participation and the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 825-853, August.
    25. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah J, 1996. "Evaluating the Effects of Incomplete Markets on Risk Sharing and Asset Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(3), pages 443-487, June.
    26. James N. Blignaut & Jan H. van Heerden & Margaret Chitiga-Mabugu & Philip D. Adams & Reyno Seymore, 2009. "The impact of an electricity generation tax on the South African economy," Working Papers 139, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    27. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Yao, Tong, 2007. "Testing heterogeneous-agent models: an alternative aggregation approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 369-412, March.
    28. Breeden, Douglas T., 1979. "An intertemporal asset pricing model with stochastic consumption and investment opportunities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 265-296, September.
    29. Franke, Gunter & Stapleton, Richard C. & Subrahmanyam, Marti G., 1998. "Who Buys and Who Sells Options: The Role of Options in an Economy with Background Risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 89-109, September.
    30. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1991. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 263-286, April.
    31. Bakshi, Gurdip S & Chen, Zhiwu, 1996. "The Spirit of Capitalism and Stock-Market Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 133-157, March.
    32. Kris Jacobs, 1999. "Incomplete Markets and Security Prices: Do Asset‐Pricing Puzzles Result from Aggregation Problems?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(1), pages 123-163, February.
    33. Telmer, Chris I, 1993. "Asset-Pricing Puzzles and Incomplete Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1803-1832, December.
    34. Kimball, Miles S, 1993. "Standard Risk Aversion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 589-611, May.
    35. Poon, Ser-Huang, 2005. "Asset Pricing in Discrete Time: A Complete Markets Approach," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199271443, December.
    36. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    37. Dreze, Jacques H. & Modigliani, Franco, 1972. "Consumption decisions under uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 308-335, December.
    38. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    39. Runkle, David E., 1991. "Liquidity constraints and the permanent-income hypothesis : Evidence from panel data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 73-98, February.
    40. Roland Ismer & Karsten Neuhoff, 2007. "Border tax adjustment: a feasible way to support stringent emission trading," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 137-164, October.
    41. Aiyagari, S. Rao & Gertler, Mark, 1991. "Asset returns with transactions costs and uninsured individual risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 311-331, June.
    42. Geert Bekaert, 2004. "Conditioning Information and Variance Bounds on Pricing Kernels," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 339-378.
    43. Warwick J. McKibbin & Peter J. Wilcoxen, 2002. "The Role of Economics in Climate Change Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 107-129, Spring.
    44. Marti G. Subrahmanyam & Günter Franke & Richard C. Stapleton, 1998. "Who Buys and Who Sells Options: The Role and Pricing of Options in an Economy with Background Risk," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 98-063, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    45. Ben Lockwood & John Whalley, 2010. "Carbon‐motivated Border Tax Adjustments: Old Wine in Green Bottles?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(6), pages 810-819, June.
    46. Kihlstrom, Richard E & Romer, David & Williams, Steve, 1981. "Risk Aversion with Random Initial Wealth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 911-920, June.
    47. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah, 1997. "Market Frictions, Savings Behavior, And Portfolio Choice," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 76-101, January.
    48. Huggett, Mark, 1993. "The risk-free rate in heterogeneous-agent incomplete-insurance economies," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 17(5-6), pages 953-969.
    49. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1982. "Generalized Instrumental Variables Estimation of Nonlinear Rational Expectations Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(5), pages 1269-1286, September.
    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. Nyoni, Thabani, 2019. "Is the United States of America (USA) really being made great again? witty insights from the Box-Jenkins ARIMA approach," MPRA Paper 91353, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Guangling 'Dave' Liu & Rangan Gupta & Eric Schaling, 2009. "A New-Keynesian DSGE model for forecasting the South African economy," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 387-404.
    3. Rangan Gupta & Sonali Das, 2010. "Predicting Downturns in the US Housing Market: A Bayesian Approach," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 294-319, October.
    4. Rangan Gupta & Sonali Das, 2008. "Spatial Bayesian Methods Of Forecasting House Prices In Six Metropolitan Areas Of South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 76(2), pages 298-313, June.
    5. Pop, Raluca-Elena, 2017. "A small-scale DSGE-VAR model for the Romanian economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1-9.

    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. Andrei Semenov, 2003. "High-Order Consumption Moments and Asset Pricing," Working Papers 2003_4, York University, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2005.
    2. Andrei Semenov, 2017. "Background risk in consumption and the equity risk premium," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 407-439, February.
    3. Kris Jacobs, 2002. "The Rate of Risk Aversion May Be Lower Than You Think," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-08, CIRANO.
    4. John Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2007. "Risk Based Explanations of the Equity Premium," NBER Working Papers 13220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Alon Brav & George M. Constantinides & Christopher C. Geczy, 2002. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and Limited Participation: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 793-824, August.
    6. George M. Constantinides, 2002. "Rational Asset Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1567-1591, August.
    7. George M. Constantinides, 2006. "Market Organization And The Prices Of Financial Assets," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(s1), pages 1-23, September.
    8. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.
    9. YiLi Chien & Hanno Lustig, 2010. "The Market Price of Aggregate Risk and the Wealth Distribution," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1596-1650, April.
    10. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 1-101, July.
    11. Jacobs, Kris & Pallage, Stéphane & Robe, Michel A., 2013. "Market incompleteness and the equity premium puzzle: Evidence from state-level data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 378-388.
    12. Kevin X.D. Huang & Zheng Liu & John Qi Zhu, 2015. "Temptation and Self‐Control: Some Evidence and Applications," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(4), pages 581-615, June.
    13. Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2013. "Advances in Consumption-Based Asset Pricing: Empirical Tests," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 799-906, Elsevier.
    14. Jacobs, Kris, 2000. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1472, Econometric Society.
    15. Andrei Semenov, 2008. "Estimation of the consumption CAPM with imperfect sample separation information," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(4), pages 333-348.
    16. Krueger, Dirk & Lustig, Hanno, 2010. "When is market incompleteness irrelevant for the price of aggregate risk (and when is it not)?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 1-41, January.
    17. Cogley, Timothy, 2002. "Idiosyncratic risk and the equity premium: evidence from the consumer expenditure survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 309-334, March.
    18. Basu, Parantap & Semenov, Andrei & Wada, Kenji, 2011. "Uninsurable risk and financial market puzzles," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1055-1089, October.
    19. Telmer, Chris I. & Zin, Stanley E., 2002. "Prices as factors: Approximate aggregation with incomplete markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(7-8), pages 1127-1157, July.
    20. Parantap Basu & Andrei Semenovz & Kenji Wadax, 2007. "Uninsurable Risk and Financial Market Puzzles," CDMA Conference Paper Series 0701, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government 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:ekd:002596:259600155. 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: Theresa Leary (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecomoea.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.