Buy What do we know about carbon taxes? An inquiry into their impacts on competitiveness and distribution of income [An article from: Energy Policy] by Z.X. Zhang, A. Baranzini available and for sale on Brightsurf

View Larger Image	What do we know about carbon taxes? An inquiry into their impacts on competitiveness and distribution of income [An article from: Energy Policy] by Z.X. Zhang, A. Baranzini List Price:  $8.95 Available:  Available for download now Sales Rank:  3055523 Studio:  Elsevier Binding:  Digital Publication Date:  March 01, 2004 Publisher:  Elsevier
FORMATS HTML EDITORIAL REVIEWS Product Description This digital document is a journal article from Energy Policy, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Description: The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has set legally binding emissions targets for a basket of six greenhouse gases and timetables for industrialised countries. It has also incorporated three international flexibility mechanisms. However, the Articles defining the flexibility mechanisms carry wording that their use must be supplemental to domestic actions. This has led to the open debates on interpretations of these supplementarity provisions. Such debates ended at the resumed sixth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, held in Bonn, July 2001, and at the subsequent COP-7 in Marrakesh, November 2001. The final wording in the Bonn Agreement, reaffirmed in the Marrakesh Accords, at least indicates that domestic policies will have an important role to play in meeting Annex B countries' emissions commitments. Carbon taxes have long been advocated because of their cost effectiveness in achieving a given emissions reduction. In this paper, the main economic impacts of carbon taxes are assessed. Based on a review of empirical studies on existing carbon/energy taxes, it is concluded that competitive losses and distributive impacts are generally not significant and definitely less than often perceived. However, given the ultimate objective of the Framework Convention, future carbon taxes could have higher rates than those already imposed and thus the resulting economic impacts could be more acute. In this context, it has been shown that how to use the generated fiscal revenues will be of fundamental importance in determining the final economic impacts of carbon taxes. Finally, we briefly discuss carbon taxes in combination with other domestic and international instruments.