Carbon Taxation: A Tale of Three Countries

Patrick Criqui, Mark Jaccard and Thomas Sterner
Additional contact information
Patrick Criqui: Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, GAEL, 38000 Grenoble, France
Mark Jaccard: School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 22, 1-21

Abstract: Carbon pricing is considered by most economists as a central dimension to any climate policy. It is assumed to bring simple, transparent, and cost-effective means to change investment and consumption behaviors. The most straightforward method is carbon taxation, but its implementation is more complex. This study provides a comparative analysis of carbon taxation in three countries—Sweden, Canada, and France—aimed at drawing lessons for the future of carbon taxation. Comparing the experience of the three countries reveals that carbon taxes, once in place, do have the intended effect. In this sense, they work well. However, the analysis also reveals very different situations in terms of advances, difficulties, and results, which highlights the need to carefully consider the social and political conditions for the acceptance and effective implementation of such economic instruments. Against this background, the comparative analysis yields four main insights that deserve further research from economics and social scientists: the ability to combine pure economic instruments and other regulation or policies and measures; the management of lobbies and vested interests; the identification of a clear strategy for the recycling of the carbon revenues, whether earmarked or not; and finally, the importance of these three dimensions of carbon taxes in the new settings of zero net emission policies.

Keywords: GHG abatement; environmental policy; economic instruments; carbon tax; cost-effectiveness; acceptability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/22/6280/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/22/6280/ (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Carbon Taxation: A Tale of Three Countries (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:22:p:6280-:d:284933

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().