Efficient CO2 Emissions Control with National Emissions Taxes and International Emissions Trading

Thomas Eichner and Rüdiger Pethig

No 1967, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: In a group of countries like the European Union all countries seek to achieve their national CO2 emissions target by a joint emissions trading scheme covering some part of their economies (trading sector) and by a national emissions tax in the rest of their economies (nontrading sector). Applicable are also emissions taxes overlapping with the trading scheme that can either be freely chosen or are inert. Welfare-maximizing governments determine tax rates and the tradable-permits budget. It is shown that efficiency requires not to levy overlapping emissions taxes and to set the tax rate in the nontrading sector equal to the permit price. In the small-country case emissions control turns out to be efficient if tax rates in the trading sector are flexible. Otherwise it is second-best to violate cost effectiveness and to choose an excessive endowment of tradable permits. If countries are large and optimal tariffs cannot be applied, emissions taxes or subsidies (!) are shown to serve as a perfect surrogate; efficiency cannot be attained unless there is a central authority mandating cost effectiveness and banning overlapping taxes. Fiscal externalities are specified and the countries’ welfare in the large and small country case is compared.

Keywords: emissions taxes; emissions trading; international trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H21 H22 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1967.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ces:ceswps:_1967

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().