Emission taxes when pollution depends on location

Walid Marrouch () and Bernard Sinclair-Desgagné ()

Environment and Development Economics, 2012, vol. 17, issue 4, 433-443

Abstract: It is well known that an efficient pollution taxation scheme should charge each source according to its specific marginal contribution to social damages. Despite significant advances in environmental assessment, geographic information systems and data analysis, this requirement would impose technical, informational and administrative expenses that most regulators – notably in developing countries – seem unable to afford. This paper shows that it can actually be less demanding than it seems. If polluters are price-takers, for instance, in a context where the affected population concentrates at a given location, then the optimal emission tax will disregard a source's location. Otherwise, the adjustment of the optimal tax to location will depend on the extent of a polluter's market power.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

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:cup:endeec:v:17:y:2012:i:04:p:433-443_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Development Economics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().