Tax Policy Issues in Designing a Carbon Tax

Donald B. Marron and Eric Toder

American Economic Review, 2014, vol. 104, issue 5, 563-68

Abstract: A carbon tax is a promising tool for discouraging the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In principle, a well-designed tax could reduce the risk of climate change, minimize the cost of emissions reductions, encourage innovation in low-carbon technologies, and raise new public revenue. But designing a real-world carbon tax poses significant challenges. We analyze those challenges from a public finance perspective, emphasizing three tax policy design issues: setting the tax rate, collecting the tax, and using the resulting revenue. The benefits of a carbon tax will depend on how policymakers address those issues.

JEL-codes: H23 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.5.563
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.104.5.563 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/10405/P2014_1163_data.zip (application/zip)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10405/P2014_1163_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:5:p:563-68

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().