I document voting behavior in Washington State’s revenue-neutral carbon tax referendum of November 2016. The initiative (I-732) would have taxed carbon emissions from fossil fuels while simultaneously lowering the retail sales tax and certain manufacturing taxes and matching the federal Earned Income Tax Credit. Voters rejected I-732 with 41% voting for and 59% against. Precinct-level vote shar...

This paper estimates the welfare costs of the main medium-term options for significantly reducing U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, including carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems applied economy-wide and to the power sector only, and an emissions rate standard for power generation. The key theme is that welfare costs depend importantly on how policies interact with distortio...

Application of price mechanisms has been the important instrument for carbon reduction, among which the carbon tax has been frequently advocated as a cost-effective economic tool. However, blanket taxes applied to all industries in a country might not always be fair or successful. It should therefore be implemented together with other economic tools, such as emission trading, for CO2 reduction....

The global liberalization of energy market and the evolving carbon policy have profound implication on a producer’s optimal generator portfolio problem. On one hand, the daily operational flexibility from a wellcomposed generator portfolio enables the producer to implement a more aggressive bidding strategy in the liberalized day-ahead market on a daily basis; on the other hand, the evolving ca...

This paper assesses the economic impacts of the Swiss climate policy formulated under the Kyoto Protocol; the impacts on the carbon price, the welfare cost, and trade effects are examined. Our analysis is based on a multi-sectoral and multi-regional, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the world economy (GEMINI-E3) which includes a representation of the Swiss economy. The model is use...

Application of price mechanisms has been the important instrument for carbon reduction, among which the carbon tax have been frequently advocated as a cost-effective economic tool. This study aims to assess the effects of carbon taxes on different industry sectors in Taiwan. A fuzzy goal programming approach, integrated with grey prediction and input-output theory, is used to construct a model ...

Domestic carbon pricing policies may impose adverse competitiveness risks on energy-intensive firms and industries competing with foreign firms that may bear a lower or zero price on carbon. The risks of competitiveness effects include adverse economic outcomes—reduced production, lower employment, and higher net imports—and adverse environmental outcomes, with the shifting of emissions-intensi...

This paper asks three questions. First, how do carbon taxes drive economic and environmental outcomes? Second, what is the appropriate economic base on which carbon taxes should be levied? Finally, how well does a carbon tax deliver economicenvironmental outcomes compared to a comparable emissions trading scheme.

The policy instruments for emissions reductions will be an integral part of a PostKyoto Climate Regime. Using the CGE model DART, we compare a harmonized international carbon tax to a cap-and-trade system with different emission caps. The carbon tax tends to favor industrialized countries while e.g. emissions trading under the “contraction and convergence” approach with converging per capita em...