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http://dx.doi.org/10.15266/KEREA.2015.24.1.001

Potential Welfare Loss from Using Imperfect Environmental Taxes  

Hong, Inkee (Dept. of Economics, Daegu University)
Publication Information
Environmental and Resource Economics Review / v.24, no.1, 2015 , pp. 1-53 More about this Journal
Abstract
In environmental policy areas, a greater use of economic instruments (EIs) has recently been observed in many countries. However, EIs are heterogeneous policy tools. The textbook case of a Pigouvian tax is far from widely used, mainly due to the information requirements and other structural and institutional constraints. The successful implementation of EIs might heavily depend on pre-existing structural and institutional conditions. Moreover, these institutional conditions are particularly unfavorable in developing countries. Using a simple analytical general equilibrium model, this paper examines how these constraints affect the welfare gain from the introduction of environmental taxes in developing countries. First, this paper solves for the second-best optimal Pigouvian tax and output tax in the presence of a distortionary tax on market use of labor. The result confirms that an environmental output tax achieves a socially-efficient level of emissions in the least-cost manner only if the nature of the linkage between the tax base and the environmental damage is fixed. Second, incorporating structural and institutional constraints into the model through a set of parameter values from China and the US, this paper calculates the net welfare effects of either using the ideal Pigouvian tax or instead using an output tax. The numerical simulation results show that the net welfare gain from the use of an ideal Pigouvian tax could be more than six times larger than that of an output tax in developing countries. On the other hand, the welfare gain is only 50 percent in developed countries. This means that the potential welfare disadvantage from using output taxes instead emissions tax for environmental purposes could be much greater in the case of developing countries.
Keywords
Emissions Tax; Output Tax; Environmental Taxation; Optimal Taxation; Environmental Policies; Developing Countries;
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