دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 17337
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

آیا مالیات بر کربن می تواند جایگزین رانت اوپک بشود؟

عنوان انگلیسی
Can carbon tax eat OPEC's rents?
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
17337 2004 12 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Volume 47, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 1–12

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
تغییرات آب و هوایی - انرژی - منابع غیر قابل تجدید - بازی های پویا -
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
Climate change, Energy, Nonrenewable resources, Dynamic games,
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  آیا مالیات بر کربن می تواند جایگزین رانت اوپک بشود؟

چکیده انگلیسی

We consider the optimal emission tax for a stock pollutant when the pollutant flow is also regulated by a resource-exporting cartel. We consolidate, clarify, and generalize a set of previous results to obtain clear isolation of the Pigouvian and trade-policy components of the tax. Because of the trade-policy component, the tax can shift more rents from the cartel than the pollution causes damage-related costs. This leads to the possibility that the pollution problem accompanied by the coordination of taxation can bring about net benefits at the expense of the cartel.

مقدمه انگلیسی

Fuel taxes are controversial. Some find them punitively high and argue that they should be reduced in response to increased fuel prices. Others argue that fuel taxes should be increased to reduce traffic congestion and various environmental externalities, including global warming which fossil-fuel burning possibly contributes to.1 Politicians often like fuel taxes because they have good revenue-raising properties and since the threat of global warming provides a prominent efficiency reason for taxing the carbon content of fuels.2 The arguments in favor and against carbon taxation are complicated by the presence of a resource-exporting cartel (OPEC). According to one hypothesis, OPEC may react strategically and increase the producer price to receive a major part of the tax revenues that would otherwise remain in oil importing countries [20], [21] and [22]. On the other hand, while the prices of fuels are to a large extent beyond the control of individual countries importing fuels, there is no reason to believe that fuel prices cannot be affected by a coalition of importing countries coordinating their carbon taxation. Our objective is to consider the optimal design of the carbon tax in the presence of two-sided strategic interaction: the buyer side coordinating taxation understands the effect of taxes on fuel prices, and seller side coordinating sales understands the effect of sales on taxation. Our new result is the general and explicit isolation of the Pigouvian and strategic trade-policy components of the optimal tax for a stock pollutant. When the buyer side coordinates the emission taxation, the optimal tax includes an import-tariff element shifting rents from the resource-exporting cartel. We show that the tax must shift more rents than the pollution causes damage-related costs if the pollution problem is not too severe. The result means that the payoff for the importing countries can exceed the payoff realized in the absence of pollution—in this sense, the pollution problem accompanied by carbon taxation can bring about net benefits for the Kyoto countries at the expense of the OPEC group. Our results are consistent with the common view that carbon taxation is a threat rather an opportunity to OPEC. Because several recent papers [15], [20], [21] and [22] contradict this view, it is important to clarify the issue. These results should not be surprising, given the literature on optimal tariffs in exhaustible-resource markets. Karp [11] and Karp and Newbery [12] show that buyers with monopsonistic power can use a dynamic optimum tariff to decrease the sellers’ resource rent. Analogously, coordinating carbon taxation creates a strategic incentive to use the tax as a partial import tariff—in the limiting case where damage-related costs are absent the tax exactly coincides with the import tariff.3 What is more surprising is that the tax includes an import-subsidy, not an import-tariff, component when the pollution problem is severe. The type of the trade-policy component thus depends on the severity of the pollution problem. 4 Because of the trade-policy component, the optimal carbon tax generally deviates from the neutral Pigouvian tax which would internalize only the damage cost of pollution. 5 We apply a differential game that is close to that previously used by Wirl [21], Tahvonen [17] and [18] and Rubio and Escriche [15]. The dynamic approach is needed because the payoffs on both sides depend on the sellers’ unextracted resource stock. We consolidate, clarify, and extend a set of results produced in these previous papers to obtain clear and general representation for the Pigouvian and trade-policy components of the tax. We use the same equilibrium concept as the previous literature, the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium (MPNE), consider only stock pollutants, and include stock-dependent extraction costs (as in [15], [18] and [21]). We deviate from the previous literature in two ways. First, we use the traditional definition of a Pigouvian tax for a stock pollutant (see [4]). Second, we compare the MPNE not only to the efficient equilibrium but also directly to the cartel equilibrium in the absence of the carbon tax. The latter equilibrium seems to be the relevant pre-tax case. We also explicitly characterize the time paths implied by the MPNE, which leads to a sharper comparison of the equilibria.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

The majority of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide are caused by the combustion of fossil fuels [10]. While the prices of these fuels are to a large extent beyond the control of individual countries importing the fuels, there is no reason to believe that these prices cannot be affected by a coalition of importing countries coordinating their emission taxation. We argued that the carbon tax can be used to reduce the producer price of fossil fuels and thereby to shift resource rents from the resource-exporting countries. In fact, the optimal carbon tax for the coalition of buyers’ who suffer from the pollution damage and face a cartelized supply is partly a tariff and, therefore, the tax is not purely Pigouvian. The rent-shifting result is in contrast with some recent studies elaborating this issue [15], [20], [21] and [22] but entirely consistent with tariff retaliation arguments in trade theory [23, Chapter 12], with [17] and [18], and with studies on optimal tariffs in exhaustible resource markets [11] and [12]. An important restriction in the above literature as well as in this paper is the assumption of fully cartelized supply. One extension is the cartel-competitive fringe setup [13]. Another extension is an oligopolistic market where several producers extract their own stocks, serve the same market and do not directly coordinate the market price. Only recently, Salo and Tahvonen [16] have characterized the Nash–Cournot equilibria in such a market without relying on the Nash open-loop equilibrium concept (see also [7]). The optimal design of the carbon tax under these market structures is left open for future research.