 The many faces of carbon tax regressivity—Why carbon taxes are not always regressive for the same reasonJules Linden, O’Donoghue, Cathal and Denisa Sologon Energy Policy, 2024, vol. 192, issue C Abstract: Carbon taxes can be regressive for multiple reasons. Differences in what households consume, the carbon-intensive of what they consume, the technology they use, and how much of their income they spend all contribute towards the regressivity of a carbon tax. This paper quantifies the relative importance of these factors for carbon tax regressivity in 6 EU countries. The comparison across countries highlights that differences in what households consume are important, but not always the most important factor in driving carbon tax regressivity. Differences in how much of their income households spend are always important and often the most important factor. Differences in the carbon intensity of consumption are more relevant in Eastern European countries and the importance of heating and transportation technology depends on the country. This paper concludes with implications for designing effective mitigation strategies and cross-country policy transfer, highlighting that the source of carbon tax regressivity and effective strategies differs across countries. Keywords: Distributional effect; Decomposition; Energy; Income inequality; Carbon intensity; Carbon pricing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:192:y:2024:i:c:s0301421524002301 DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114210 Access Statistics for this article Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier |
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