Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorTEIXIDO-FIGUERAS, Jordi
dc.contributor.authorVERDE, Stefano F.
dc.date.accessioned2018-11-28T13:14:06Z
dc.date.available2018-11-28T13:14:06Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.identifier.citationEcological economics, 2017, Vol. 138, pp. 109-125
dc.identifier.issn0921-8009
dc.identifier.issn1873-6106EN
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/59734
dc.descriptionAvailable online: 30 March 2017
dc.description.abstractPoterba(1991a) has much influenced the literature on the distributional effects of carbon pricing. Poterba argues that the incidence of energy/environmental taxes across households is better appreciated if the relative tax burdens are measured against total expenditure, interpreted as a proxy for lifetime income, instead of annual-income. This way, however, since the distribution of total expenditure is structurally more uniform, the incidence of energy price increases is always less regressive than when annual income is used. This outcome is often taken to lessen the relevance of equity concerns regarding carbon pricing. Almost twenty-five years after Poterba (1991a), Piketty (2014) revived the idea that wealth is a dimension of economic welfare constituting an increasingly important source of inequality. We show that omitting wealth in measuring ability to pay means underestimating the regressivity of carbon pricing and its inequity towards younger people. Using household-level data and statistical matching, we revisit Poterba's application and compare the distributional incidence of the US gasoline tax for different measures of ability to pay: total expenditure, income and wealth-adjusted income. Regressivity is not a reason to forgo carbon pricing as a cost-effective approach to climate mitigation, but calls for consideration and compensation of the distributional effects. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
dc.publisherElsevieren
dc.relation.ispartofEcological economics
dc.relation.ispartofseries[Florence School of Regulation]en
dc.relation.ispartofseries[Climate]en
dc.titleIs the gasoline tax regressive in the twenty-first century? : taking wealth into account
dc.typeArticle
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.03.025
dc.identifier.volume138
dc.identifier.startpage109
dc.identifier.endpage125
eui.subscribe.skiptrue
eui.subscribe.skiptrue


Files associated with this item

FilesSizeFormatView

There are no files associated with this item.

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record