استكشف المجموعة الواسعة من العناوين المتاحة.

China is entering a new period characterized by reaching peak and carbon neutralization, and environmental taxes are increasingly crucial for breaking the “carbon curse” of resource-based cities. Accordingly, using the implementation of China’s Environmental Protection Tax Law (EPT Law) as a quasi-natural experiment, this study utilizes the DID model to assess this environmental tax reform’s effect in terms of reducing carbon emissions. The research results are as follows: (1) The environmental tax reform (ETR) reduced the intensity of carbon emissions; it additionally promoted reducing total carbon emissions from resource-based cities. (2) The carbon abatement effect can also be achieved by upgrading industrial structures and improving innovation in the area of green technology. (3) The ETR has impacted carbon abatement in resource-based cities more significantly in China’s eastern region than in the central or western regions. In contrast, it had less effect on resource-based cities in the regenerative stage than on cities in other stages. (4) The spatial spillover effect of the ETR was significantly positive, aggravating the level of carbon emissions in neighboring cities. Thus, the “pollution haven hypothesis” was tested. Overall, this study deepens the knowledge of ETR and carbon emissions and provides theoretical support and policy suggestions for supporting resource-based cities in a green transformation.

Improving energy efficiency and mitigating environmental problems through environmental regulations and taxes are considered as fundamental driving forces of climate change policies. However, the current literature on the theoretical and empirical evidence focusing on the inter-linkages between environmental taxes, energy consumption, and environmental quality is rather meager. This article attempts to provide a detailed survey on the earlier literature for developed, developing, and emerging countries analysis by covering the literature up to 2020. The prime objective of this survey is the coverage of different level of economies, modeling, methodologies, time periods as well as empirical outcomes. The study mainly covers three types of causality direction: (i) environmental taxes, energy consumption, and energy efficiency; (ii) environmental taxes and environmental quality; (iii) energy consumption (renewables, non-renewable, and fossil fuels) and environment deterioration. Most of the empirical studies reported that the energy usage for economic activities significantly affects the pollutant emissions. However, the role of environmental taxes is still ambiguous and demands a more in-depth investigation. Comprehending the literature survey has provided the basis to address the policymaking, designing as well as the implementation of environmental regulations.

Environmental tax and environmental policy stringency are becoming central policy instruments for combating environmental degradation but there is a lack of studies that assess their combined effectiveness in mitigating emissions especially for emerging economies. We address this important gap by assessing the effectiveness of these two policy instruments in reducing CO 2 emission in a panel of 7 emerging economies for the period 1994–2015. We believe that this is the first attempt to apply these two important policy instruments in the same framework for testing their effectiveness in reducing CO 2 emissions in these 7 emerging economies. We apply heterogeneous panel data considering cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity tests by using the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) which is efficient and unbiased and produces consistent estimates. We found an inverted U-shaped relationship between CO 2 emissions and environmental policy stringency suggesting that it takes time for environmental policy stringency to be effective. We also found unidirectional causality running from environmental policy stringency to CO 2 emission. CO 2 emission was negatively and significantly related to total environmental tax with causality running from total environmental tax to CO 2 emission thus supporting the “green dividend” hypothesis of improving environmental quality. In contrast, CO 2 emission and energy taxes were not causality related but CO 2 emission was negatively and significantly related to energy taxes. Robustness checks using the FMOLS also show that both environmental policy stringency and environmental taxes can be effective in mitigating CO 2 emissions.

In response to the COVID-19 health crisis, the French government has imposed drastic lockdown measures for a period of 55 days. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the economic and environmental impacts of these measures in the short and long term. We use a Computable General Equilibrium model designed to assess environmental and energy policies impacts at the macroeconomic and sectoral levels. We find that the lockdown has led to a significant decrease in economic output of 5% of GDP, but a positive environmental impact with a 6.6% reduction in CO2 emissions in 2020. Both decreases are temporary: economic and environmental indicators return to their baseline trajectory after a few years. CO2 emissions even end up significantly higher after the COVID-19 crisis when we account for persistently low oil prices. We then investigate whether implementing carbon pricing can still yield positive macroeconomic dividends in the post-COVID recovery. We find that implementing ambitious carbon pricing speeds up economic recovery while significantly reducing CO2 emissions. By maintaining high fossil fuel prices, carbon taxation reduces the imports of fossil energy and stimulates energy efficiency investments while the full redistribution of tax proceeds does not hamper the recovery.

Using difference-in-differences, synthetic control, and introducing a new break-detection approach, I show that the introduction of North America’s first major carbon tax has reduced transportation emissions but not ‘yet’ led to large statistically significant reductions in aggregate CO2 emissions. Proposing a new method to assess policy based on breaks in difference-in-differences using machine learning, I demonstrate that neither carbon pricing nor trading schemes in other provinces are detected as large and statistically significant interventions. Instead, closures and efficiency-improvements in emission-intense industries in untaxed provinces have reduced emissions. Overall, the results show that existing carbon taxes (and prices) are likely too low to be effective in the time frame since their introduction.

Empirical evidence shows that low-income households spend a high share of their income on pollution-intensive goods. This fuels the concern that an environmental tax reform could be regressive. We employ a framework which accounts for the distributional effect of environmental taxes and the recycling of the revenues on both households and firms to quantify changes in the optimal tax structure and the equity impacts of an environmental tax reform. We characterize when an optimal environmental tax reform does not increase inequality, even if the tax system before the reform is optimal from a non-environmental point of view. If the tax system before the reform is calibrated to stylized data—and is thus non-optimal—we find that there is a large scope for inequality reduction, even if the government is restricted in its recycling options.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of environmental regulatory stringency on innovation and productivity using a panel of 8 European countries for 13 manufacturing sectors over the years 2001–2007. This research topic falls under the heading of the Porter hypothesis (PH) of which different versions have been tested. We consider both the strong and the weak versions of the PH, while also adding some peculiar features to the analysis. Firstly, we assess the role played by environmental taxes, that is an instrument rarely tested as a factor which can support the PH. Secondly, we analyse not only the effect of environmental taxes within a given sector (within-sector), but also the role played by environmental taxes in upstream and downstream sectors in terms of input–output relationships. Thirdly, we test these relationships also ‘indirectly’ by verifying whether innovation is one of the channels through which higher sectoral productivity can be achieved by imposing tighter environmental regulations. Our main findings suggest that downstream stringency is the most relevant driver of innovation and productivity while within-sector regulations only affect productivity but not innovation. Moreover, the effect of regulations on productivity is mostly direct, while the part of the effect mediated by induced innovations, as measured by patents, is relevant only for what concerns downstream regulations.

Turning the Paris Agreement’s greenhouse gas emissions pledges into domestic policies is the next challenge for governments. We address the question of the acceptability of cost-effective climate policy in a real-voting setting. First, we analyze voting behavior in a large ballot on energy taxes, rejected in Switzerland in 2015 by more than 2 million people. Energy taxes were aimed at completely replacing the current value-added tax. We examine the determinants of voting and find that distributional and competitiveness concerns reduced the acceptability of energy taxes, along with the perception of ineffectiveness. Most people would have preferred tax revenues to be allocated for environmental purposes. Second, at the same time of the ballot, we tested the acceptability of alternative designs of a carbon tax with a choice experiment survey on a representative sample of the Swiss population. Survey respondents are informed about environmental, distributional and competitiveness effects of each carbon tax design. These impacts are estimated with a computable general equilibrium model. This original setting generates a series of novel results. Providing information on the expected environmental effectiveness of carbon taxes reduces the demand for environmental earmarking. Making distributional effects salient generates an important demand for progressive designs, e.g. social cushioning or recycling via lump-sum transfers. The case of lump-sum recycling is particularly striking: it is sufficient to show its desirable distributional properties to make it one of the most preferred designs, which corresponds to a completely novel result in the literature. We show that providing detailed information on the functioning of environmental taxes may contribute to close both the gap between acceptability ex ante and ex post and the gap between economists’ prescriptions and the preferences of the general public.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of environmental taxes and environmental stringent policies in reducing CO2 emissions in a panel of 20 European countries for the period 1995–2012. As mounting global environmental and climate challenges are becoming great cause for concern, environmental stringency policies and environmental taxes are becoming the cornerstones for a sustainable environment. Applying panel cointegration tests, we found a negative and a statistically significant relationship between environment taxes (disaggregated into total, energy and transport taxes) and CO2 emissions on the one hand and also a negative and a statistically significant relationship between environmental policy stringent and CO2 emissions on the other. The robustness of the evidence is also supported by a quantile regression model. The higher the environmental stringency policy, the lower the CO2 emission. Similarly, the higher the revenue from total environmental tax, energy and transport tax, the higher the reductions in CO2 emissions. Both these two policy instruments were effective in reducing CO2 emissions. The positive impact of environmental tax on improving environmental quality should encourage policy makers to increase environmental tax as the current level of environmental tax is believed to be low relative to levels required to achieve climate change objectives and is also low relative to the social cost of carbon and relative to the prices of taxed fuels.

The surge in economic and human development has led to increasing concerns about environmental degradation, thus necessitating effective strategies to enhance sustainability and environmental quality. Therefore, this study empirically examines the impact of environmental fiscal policies, environmental technologies, and research and development (R&D) expenditures on achieving environmental sustainability in the G7 countries. Using advanced econometric techniques, including the Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lags (CS-ARDL) model and the Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE) approach, the study identifies both short-run and long-run correlations between the aforementioned variables and their impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Our findings confirm the inverted U-shaped Kuznets Curve relationship and reinforce the previous literature on the complex dynamics between economic growth and GHG emissions specific to developed countries. The research also supports the effectiveness of well-designed environmental taxes in reducing environmental degradation and GHG emissions, consistent with and extending existing studies in this area. In addition, the study provides empirical evidence of the critical role of environmental technologies and targeted R&D expenditures in improving environmental quality. In terms of policy implications, our research underscores the urgency for policymakers in the G7 countries to fine-tune environmental taxation mechanisms and increase investment in sustainable technological solutions. Specific recommendations include the development of more efficient tax systems that adhere to the polluter-pays principle, as well as financial incentives such as tax credits and subsidies aimed at accelerating green technology adoption and innovation. In doing so, the study seeks to contribute to the broader discourse on environmental policy and sustainable development, providing valuable perspectives for both the academic community and policy actors.