Environmental Tax Reforms And The Double Dividend

An important topic in environmental economics is how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in order to reduce the threat of global warming. For this purpose, some countries levy environmental taxes. Often, such taxes can result in a second dividend if revenues are used for other governmental purposes such as the reduction of unemployment or the reduction of taxes. Can Germany realistically earn this "double dividend"? Based on a theoretical model, Scholz performs numerical simulations to find out whether environmental taxes have positive effects on households (differentiated by income groups) and firms (differentiated by technologies). Scholz finds that most effects on employment are not large enough to warrant the term "double dividend" and concludes that it is better to levy environmental taxes only for environmental objectives. This study will be of interest to scholars and students specializing in environmental economic issues as well as to international organizations and research institutes in economics.

'In looking at the effects of ecological tax reform on allocation, this book addresses a very important issue. The results are interesting and have significant policy implications.' - Glenn Feltham, Canadian Tax Journal 'The book contains an excellent analysis of how environment taxation affects large countries that are highly integrated in world capital markets.' - Lans Bovenberg, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, The Netherlands The twin benefits of improving environmental quality and reducing tax distortions through the recycling of environmental tax proceeds prove an attractive policy objective. This book analyses the use of the double dividend concepts for evaluating ecological tax reforms. The author aims to analyse unilateral environmental policy measures thoroughly and to assess under which conditions a double dividend can be achieved. The analysis is undertaken in the context of international capital mobility and cross-border externalities. He also includes a discussion of an empirically relevant example for an ecological tax reform scenario in Germany - the DIW proposal.

A rigorous and innovative approach for integrating environmental policies and fiscal reform for the U.S. economy. Energy utilization, especially from fossil fuels, creates hidden costs in the form of pollution and environmental damages. The costs are well documented but are hidden in the sense that they occur outside the market, are not reflected in market prices, and are not taken into account by energy users. Double Dividend presents a novel method for designing environmental taxes that correct market prices so that they reflect the true cost of energy. The resulting revenue can be used in reducing the burden of the overall tax system and improving the performance of the economy, creating the double dividend of the title. The authors simulate the impact of environmental taxes on the U.S. economy using their Intertemporal General Equilibrium Model (IGEM). This highly innovative model incorporates expectations about future prices and policies. The model is estimated econometrically from an extensive 50-year dataset to incorporate the heterogeneity of producers and consumers. This approach generates confidence intervals for the outcomes of changes in economic policies, a new feature for models used in analyzing energy and environmental policies. These outcomes include the welfare impacts on individual households, distinguished by demographic characteristics, and for society as a whole, decomposed between efficiency and equity.

During the 1990s and 2000s the issue of general welfare double dividend (an improvement in environmental quality combined with a positive welfare effect) triggered by a tax shift from labour to energy resources has been extensively debated. In this book, Kurt Kratena studies the employment effects of revenue neutral shifts from labour to energy, and measures the impact on theoretical and empirical models of the European labour market.

ÔIngeniously organized in a life cycle format, the Handbook covers environmental taxation concepts, design, acceptance, implementation, and impact. The universal themes discussed in each area will appeal to a broad range of readers.Õ Ð Larry Kreiser, Cleveland State University, US ÔThis book is a smart and useful readerÕs guide providing analytical tools for a full comprehension of environmental taxes, with an interdisciplinary approach that looks at all the different phases of environmental taxation: from the design to the implementation, the political acceptance and the impact on the economy. The authorsÕ effort is very successful in endowing academicians, policy makers and the general public with an excellent proof of the effectiveness of environmental taxes and green tax reforms.Õ Ð Alberto Majocchi, University of Pavia, Italy ÔPutting the words ÒenvironmentÓ next to ÒtaxationÓ might not always be the flavour of the month, but no modern society can ignore the value of the natural environment and the need to maintain its good quality and no competitive economy can prosper without the necessary tax revenues to function. Environmental taxation offers the prospect of moving towards a more resource-efficient economy, where preference is given to tax more what we burn, less what we earn. I welcome this contribution to the literature.Õ Ð Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, European Commission ÔThe Milne and Andersen volume provides a splendid treatment of environmental taxation that encompasses the basic conceptual issues, problems of tax design and implementation, and several insightful case studies that show how environmental taxes actually work in practice. It is the best overall treatment of environmental taxation available: comprehensive, rigorous, and readable.Õ Ð Wallace Oates, University of Maryland, US The Handbook of Research on Environmental Taxation captures the state of the art of research on environmental taxation. Written by 36 specialists in environmental taxation from 16 countries, it takes an interdisciplinary and international approach, focusing on issues that are universal to using taxation to achieve environmental goals. The Handbook explores the conceptual foundations of environmental taxation, essential elements for designing environmental tax measures, factors that influence the acceptance of environmental taxation, the variety of ways to implement environmental taxes, their environmental and economic impact and, finally, the larger question of the role of taxation among other policy approaches to environmental protection. Intermixing theory with case studies, the Handbook offers readers lessons that can be applied around the world. It identifies key bodies of research for people who are already working in the field or entering the field and highlights issues that call for more research in the future. With systematic analysis of key issues in environmental taxation, this book will appeal to researchers, governments, think tanks, NGOs, and academics in law, economics, political science and public finance, as well as students specializing in environmental taxation and other market-based instruments.

Presents the paper "Tax Deductions, Environmental Policy, and the "Double Dividend" Hypothesis," written by Ian Parry and Antonio Bento in May 1999 for the World Bank. The authors find that incorporating tax-favored consumption in models of environmental tax swaps may overturn key results from earlier studies.