Environmental Policy, Full-Employment Models, and Employment: A Critical Analysis

Marc Hafstead, Roberton Williams and Yunguang Chen

No 24505, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper assesses the use of full-employment computable-general equilibrium (CGE) models to predict the labor-market effects of environmental policy. Specifically, it compares the predictions of a standard full-employment CGE model with those of a new search-CGE model with labor-search frictions and resulting unemployment (but that is otherwise identical to the full-employment model). The search-CGE captures key labor market details, including a distinction between the extensive margin of labor demand (the number of employees) and the intensive margin (the number of hours each employee works). We find that some key results are robust across the two models, such as the reallocation of labor across sectors in response to a carbon tax and the overall change in total labor demand. However, the full-employment model seriously overestimates the economy-wide net change in the number of jobs (by a factor of more than 2.5 for a carbon tax with revenues returned lump-sum to households, and by a factor of almost 3.5 when carbon tax revenues are used to reduce payroll taxes).

JEL-codes: E24 H23 J64 Q52 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-lab and nep-mac
Note: EEE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published as Marc A. C. Hafstead & Roberton C. Williams & Yunguang Chen, 2022. "Environmental Policy, Full-Employment Models, and Employment: A Critical Analysis," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol 9(2), pages 199-234.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24505.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Environmental Policy, Full-Employment Models, and Employment: A Critical Analysis (2022)
Working Paper: Environmental Policy, Full-Employment Models, and Employment: A Critical Analysis (2018)
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:nbr:nberwo:24505

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24505

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().