Greenhouse Gas Auctions and Taxes: Some Political Economy Considerations

Hahn, Robert W.

doi:10.1093/reep/rep003

Cited by 23 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Evidence suggests that historically the revenues are often earmarked towards distortionary projects or returned to the general budget, rather than recycled (Hahn 2009) and this limits the expected double dividend (Bovenberg and Goulder 1996). What is really required to move Australia off its coal fired electricity generation and avoid substitution by other polluting sources such as nuclear or gas?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Australia’s Carbon Tax: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?

Spash¹,

Lo²

2012

Econ. labour relat. rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Australian Government has produced a CO 2 -equivalent tax proposal with a difference, it is a short prelude to an emission trading scheme that will allow the increasing rate of emissions to continue, while being a net cost to the Treasury. That cost extends to allowing major emitters to make guaranteed windfall profits from pollution permits. The emission trading scheme suffers numerous problems, but the issues raised show taxes can also be watered down and made ineffectual through concessions. Taxpayers will get no assets from the billions of dollars to be spent buying-off the coal generators or other polluters. The scheme hopes to stimulate private investors to create an additional 12 percent in renewable electricity generation by 2020. A serious emissions reducing alternative would be to create a nationalised electricity sector with 100 percent renewable energy within a decade. We explore the difficulties of implementing meaningful greenhouse gas taxes in Australia.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Australia’s Carbon Tax: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?

Spash¹,

Lo²

2012

Econ. labour relat. rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The influence of the agricultural lobby in the United States in achieving particularistic beneficial legislation, for example, is well known. Hahn (2009) argues that political economy factors could undermine GHG policy objectives.…”

Section: Differential Preferences and Perceptions Within Countries Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Global Environmental Externalities: Transaction Costs Considerations

Libecap

2014

Journal of Economic Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Is there a way to understand why some global environmental externalities are addressed effectively, whereas others are not? The transaction costs of defining the property rights to mitigation benefits and costs is a useful framework for such analysis. This approach views international cooperation as a contractual process among country leaders to assign those property rights. Leaders cooperate when it serves domestic interests to do so. The demand for property rights comes from those who value and stand to gain from multilateral action. Property rights are supplied by international agreements that specify resource access and use, assign costs and benefits including outlining the size and duration of compensating transfer payments, and determining who will pay and who will receive them. Four factors raise the transaction costs of assigning property rights: (i) scientific uncertainty regarding mitigation benefits and costs; (ii) varying preferences and perceptions across heterogeneous populations; (iii) asymmetric information; and (iv) the extent of compliance and new entry. These factors are used to examine the role of transaction costs in the establishment and allocation of property rights to provide globally valued national parks, implement the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, execute the Montreal Protocol to manage emissions that damage the stratospheric ozone layer, set limits on harvest of highly-migratory ocean fish stocks, and control greenhouse gas emissions.

show abstract

“…Therefore, policymakers may want to couple the funding of environmental projects with social cushioning, e.g. by subsidizing public transportation as with Quebec's carbon tax (Hahn 2009). Actually, this type of public intervention is strongly supported in this survey and may explain the dominance of recycling through nancing for environmental purposes, since this broad concept may be seen as including public transportation.…”

Section: Impact Of Earmarking On Carbon Tax Acceptabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social cushioning is also considered as important, but it seems that the way of nancing it should make abstraction of environmental tax revenues. Finally, respondents would like to pay fewer income taxes, but they do not believe that the government would renounce to the opportunity of collecting new revenues (see Hahn 2009). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paying Enough Taxes Already? Testing the Acceptability of Carbon Taxes with Survey Data

Carattini

Baranzini

2014

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In spite of economist's claims, climate policy instruments such as carbon taxes are rarely implemented. This paper analyzes the drivers of carbon taxes acceptability in the semi-direct democratic context of Geneva, Switzerland. Based on a sample of more than 300 individuals, we assess the effect on acceptability of socioeconomic characteristics, environmental attitudes, social norms as well as individual's perceptions of carbon taxes advantages and disadvantages. We also show that policy design matters for acceptability, in particular earmarking for environmental purposes, and find evidence of an effect of labeling, "climate contribution" leading under some circumstances to larger acceptability than "carbon tax". We infer that proper policy design coupled with effective communication on the effects of carbon taxes may lead to a substantial improvement in acceptability.

show abstract

Greenhouse Gas Auctions and Taxes: Some Political Economy Considerations

Cited by 23 publications

References 38 publications

Australia’s Carbon Tax: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?

Australia’s Carbon Tax: A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing?

Addressing Global Environmental Externalities: Transaction Costs Considerations

Paying Enough Taxes Already? Testing the Acceptability of Carbon Taxes with Survey Data

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About