This paper offers a political economy model of green tax reforms in which the use of the revenue from the ecotax is an integrated part. We use the model to explain why and when a link between an ecotax and cuts in other non-environmental taxes can be expected. In our model, green tax swaps arise because a producer lobby group, even if the use of the revenue does not affect profits per se, takes...

Fiscal considerations may shift governmental priorities away from environmental concerns: Finance ministers face strong demand for public expenditures such as infrastructure investments but they are constrained by international tax competition. We develop a multi-region model of tax competition and resource extraction to assess the fiscal incentive of imposing a tax on carbon rather than on cap...

We develop a model for determining the optimal high income linear tax rate when there exist imperfectly substitutable types of labor. If one type is disproportionately prevalent among higher income taxpayers, then wages adjust in response to more progressive taxation and part of the statutory tax burden is shifted to lower income taxpayers. Our derivation is expressed in terms of readily interp...

Two main results in traditional tax theory states the following. First, general taxes minimize the welfare loss from changed relative prices. Second, because the total public budget tends to exceed the optimal size, a leader (here named ‘troop leader’) is needed in the budget process to prevent over-taxation. Nevertheless, differentiated taxes initiated by individual ministries generate a still...

The ‘‘green paradox’’ by Hans–Werner Sinn suggests that increasing resource taxes accelerate global warming because resource owners increase near-term extraction in fear of higher future taxation. In this note we show that this effect does only occur for the specific set of carbon taxes that increase at a rate higher than the effective discount rate of the resource owners. We calculate a critic...

The main theme of this paper is the evolution of theories and suppositions regarding environment and growth. The sustainable green growth and the sustainable green capitalism concepts have attracted the interest and imagination of policy makers and industry, and also stimulated many exciting new ideas and practical actions such as the “triple bottom line” which refers to harmonizing and balanci...

The increase of fuel extraction costs as well as of temperature will make it likely that in the medium-term future technological or political measures against global warming may be implemented. In assessments of a current climate policy the possibility of medium-term future developments like backstop technologies is largely neglected but can crucially affect its impact. Given such a future meas...