IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/1998-146.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Fiscal Policy and the Environment

Author

Listed:
  • Ms. Jenny E Ligthart

Abstract

The paper studies the setting of optimal fiscal policy in a second-best world with environmental externalities. The optimal second-best pollution tax is shown to lie below the first-best Pigovian tax, particularly if substitution between labor and polluting intermediate inputs is easy, the labor supply curve is more elastic, and preexisting taxes are large. The optimal level of public abatement is derived from the modified Samuelson rule and is larger if society cares more for the environment, public funds are inexpensive, and public abatement is relatively productive. The analysis also shows that the Samuelson rule should be revised if allowance is made for nonseparabilities in preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Ms. Jenny E Ligthart, 1998. "Optimal Fiscal Policy and the Environment," IMF Working Papers 1998/146, International Monetary Fund.
  • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:1998/146
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=2758
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shkarlet, Serhiy & Petrakov, Iaroslav, 2013. "Environmental Taxation Evolution in Ukraine: Trends, Challenges and Outlook," MPRA Paper 45168, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 May 2013.

    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:imf:imfwpa:1998/146. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.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.