IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkdp/161.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Environmental taxes and charges and EC fiscal harmonisation: Theory and policy

Author

Listed:
  • Mohr, Ernst

Abstract

Command and control instruments (e.g. standards, permits and licenses) have not been very successful in reducing environmental problems in the past. They should be replaced by market-oriented instruments, such as a system of environmental taxes and charges. Such a system would provide incentives to reduce the demand for polluting activities or to substitute other goods for pollution-intensive commodities. Further, it would provide incentives to continually apply the most advanced abatement technology available. • With international or global environmental problems on the upsurge, there is an increasing role for environmental policy coordination at the Community level. Coordination of environmental policy should in general stop short of a harmonisation of environmental tax and charge rates, as differential tax and charge rates can very frequently be made compatible with the needs of the completed Internal Market 1992. • In the absence of transboundary spillovers, environmental policy can be completely decentralised if polluting activities can be charged without using integrated control devices. If integrated control devices are unavoidable, only the tax or charge base needs to be harmonised. Tax and charge rates should be fixed by national authorities. Furthermore, if there are no transboundary spillovers and if goods are taxed at the consumption level, only norms for the declaration of polluting components should be set at the Community level. If goods are taxed at the production level, an integrated market requires the harmonisation of tax bases and tax rates at the cost of major environmental distortions. • If there are international environmental spillovers and if side payments between countries are not feasible, merely international diffusion norms should be set at the Community level. If spillovers are global (e.g. in the case of the ozone hole and climate change), tax or charge bases as well as rates should be harmonised at the Community level.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohr, Ernst, 1990. "Environmental taxes and charges and EC fiscal harmonisation: Theory and policy," Kiel Discussion Papers 161, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkdp:161
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/48008/1/256262993.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249, January.
    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. Horst Siebert, 1991. "Europe '92. Decentralizing environmental policy in the single market," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 1(3), pages 271-287, September.
    2. Heister, Johannes & Klepper, Gernot & Krämer, Hans Rachebald & Michaelis, Peter & Mohr, Ernst & Neu, Axel Dietmar & Schmidt, Rainer & Weichert, Ronald, 1991. "Umweltpolitik mit handelbaren Emissionsrechten: Möglichkeiten zur Verringerung der Kohlendioxid- und Stickoxidemissionen," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 1173, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Caminada, Koen, 1992. "Environmental tax competition among jurisdictions," MPRA Paper 20186, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Henk Folmer & Charles Howe, 1991. "Environmental problems and policy in the Single European Market," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 1(1), pages 17-41, March.

    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. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Salant, Stephen W., 2011. "A free lunch in the commons," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 245-253, May.
    2. Frans P. Vries & Nick Hanley, 2016. "Incentive-Based Policy Design for Pollution Control and Biodiversity Conservation: A Review," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(4), pages 687-702, April.
    3. Yu-Bong Lai, 2004. "Trade liberalization, consumption externalities and the environment," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 17(5), pages 1-9.
    4. Ni, Jinlan & Wei, Chu & Du, Limin, 2015. "Revealing the political decision toward Chinese carbon abatement: Based on equity and efficiency criteria," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 609-621.
    5. Giancarlo Giudici & Massimiliano Guerini & Cristina Rossi-Lamastra, 2019. "The creation of cleantech startups at the local level: the role of knowledge availability and environmental awareness," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 815-830, April.
    6. Grüll, Georg & Taschini, Luca, 2011. "Cap-and-trade properties under different hybrid scheme designs," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 107-118, January.
    7. Na Li Dawson & Kathleen Segerson, 2008. "Voluntary Agreements with Industries: Participation Incentives with Industry-Wide Targets," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(1), pages 97-114.
    8. Sam Fankhauser & Cameron Hepburn, 2009. "Carbon markets in space and time," GRI Working Papers 3, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    9. Ehigiamusoe, Kizito Uyi & Lean, Hooi Hooi & Smyth, Russell, 2020. "The moderating role of energy consumption in the carbon emissions-income nexus in middle-income countries," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    10. 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.
    11. Thomas Akpan Harry & Ekemini John Peter & Nsidibe Akpan Udoduk, 2022. "Environmental Impact Assessment Of Oil Producing Communities In Part Of The Niger Delta. A Case Study Of Ibeno, Ikot Abasi, Onna And Esit-Eket Local Government Area In Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria," Environmental Contaminants Reviews (ECR), Zibeline International Publishing, vol. 5(2), pages 49-56, April.
    12. Stavins, Robert, 2001. "Lessons From the American Experiment With Market-Based Environmental Policies," RFF Working Paper Series dp-01-53, Resources for the Future.
    13. Wu, JunJie & Zilberman, David & Babcock, Bruce A., 2001. "Environmental and Distributional Impacts of Conservation Targeting Strategies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 333-350, May.
    14. Boisvert, Richard N. & Peterson, Jeffrey M., 1996. "Conditions for Requiring Separate Green Payments Policies Under Asymmetric Information," Working Papers 127934, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    15. Janusch, Nicholas, 2016. "A note on the distortionary effects of revenue-neutral tolls in a bottleneck congestion game," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 95-103.
    16. Berta, Nathalie, 2015. "Prix versus quantités : les contorsions du marché du carbone européen," Revue de la Régulation - Capitalisme, institutions, pouvoirs, Association Recherche et Régulation, vol. 18.
    17. Managi, Shunsuke & Opaluch, James J. & Jin, Di & Grigalunas, Thomas A., 2006. "Stochastic frontier analysis of total factor productivity in the offshore oil and gas industry," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 204-215, November.
    18. Jeffrey P. Cohen & Cletus C. Coughlin, 2003. "Congestion at airports: the economics of airport expansions," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 85(May), pages 9-26.
    19. Palmer, Karen & Paul, Anthony, 2015. "A Primer on Comprehensive Policy Options for States to Comply with the Clean Power Plan," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-15, Resources for the Future.
    20. Nathalie Berta, 2016. "On the definition of externality as a missing market," Post-Print halshs-01277990, HAL.

    More about this item

    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:zbw:ifwkdp:161. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.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.