Ian W. H. Parry

The Cost-Effectiveness of Alternative Instruments for Environmental Protection in a Second-Best Setting

This paper uses analytical and numerical general equilibrium models to study the costs of achieving pollution reductions under a range of environmental policy instruments in a second-best setting with pre-existing factor taxes. We compare the costs and efficiency impacts of emissions taxes, emissions quotas, fuels taxes, performance standards, and mandated technologies, and explore how costs change with the magnitude of pre-existing taxes and the extent of pollution abatement. We find that the presence of distortionary taxes raises the costs of pollution abatement under each instrument relative to its costs in a first-best world. This extra cost is an increasing function of the magnitude of pre-existing tax rates. For plausible values of pre-existing tax rates and other parameters, the cost increase for all policies is substantial (35 % or more). The impact of pre-existing taxes is large for non-auctioned emissions quotas, the cost increase can be several hundred percent. Earlier work on instrument choice emphasized the potential reduction in compliance cost from converting fixed emissions quotas into tradeable emissions permits. Our results show the regulators decision to auction or grandfather emissions rights can have important cost impacts. Similarly, the choice of how to recycle revenues from environmentally motivated taxes can be as important to cost as whether the tax takes the form of an emissions tax or fuel tax, particularly when modest emissions reductions are involved. In both first- and second-best settings, the cost differences across instruments depend on the extent of pollution abatement under consideration. Total abatement costs differ markedly at low levels of abatement. Strikingly, for all instruments except the fuel tax these costs converge to the same value as abatement levels approach 100 percent.

When Can Carbon Abatement Policies Increase Welfare? The Fundamental Role of Distorted Factor Markets

Abstract This paper employs analytical and numerical models to assess the welfare effects of a revenue-neutral carbon tax and (nonauctioned) carbon emissions permits, taking into account preexisting tax distortions in factor markets. The presence of preexisting taxes significantly raises the general equilibrium costs of both policies. This cost increase is much greater under emissions permits, since this policy does not generate revenues to reduce distortionary taxes. Under our central estimates emissions permits cannot increase welfare unless environmental damages exceed about

Instrument choice for environmental protection when technological innovation is endogenous

18 per ton of carbon. In contrast, an appropriately scaled carbon tax is welfare-improving so long as environmental damages are positive.

Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy

This paper presents an analytical and numerical comparison of the welfare impacts of alternative instruments for environmental protection in the presence of endogenous technological innovation. We analyze emissions taxes and both auctioned and free (grandfathered) emissions permits. We find that under different sets of circumstances each of the three policies may induce a significantly higher welfare gain than the other two policies. In particular, the relative ranking of policy instruments can crucially depend on the ability of adopting firms to imitate the innovation, the costs of innovation, the slope and level of the marginal environmental benefit function, and the number of firms producing emissions. Moreover, although in theory the welfare impacts of policies differ in the presence of innovation, sometimes these differences are relatively small. In fact, when firms anticipate that policies will be adjusted over time in response to innovation, certain policies can become equivalent. Our analysis is simplified in a number of respects; for example, we assume homogeneous and competitive firms. Nonetheless, our preliminary results suggest there is no clear-cut case for preferring any one policy instrument on the grounds of dynamic efficiency.

Should Urban Transit Subsidies Be Reduced

We examine the extent to which various environmental policy instruments meet major evaluation criteria, including cost-effectiveness, distributional equity, minimization of risk in the presence of uncertainty, and political feasibility. Instruments considered include emissions taxes, tradable emissions allowances, subsidies for emissions reductions, performance standards, technology mandates, and research and development subsidies. Several themes emerge. First, no single instrument is clearly superior along all the criteria. Second, significant trade-offs arise in the choice of instrument; for example, assuring a reasonable degree of distributional equity often will require a sacrifice of cost-effectiveness. Third, it is possible and sometimes desirable to design hybrid instruments that combine features of various instruments in their “pure” form. Fourth, for many pollution problems, more than one market failure may be involved, which may justify (on efficiency grounds, at least) employing more than one instrument. Finally, potential overlaps and undesirable interactions among environmental policy instruments are sometimes a matter of concern.

Environmental taxes and quotas in the presence of distorting taxes in factor markets

This paper derives intuitive and empirically useful formulas for the optimal pricing of passenger transit and for the welfare effects of adjusting current fare subsidies, for peak and off-peak urban rail and bus systems. The formulas are implemented based on a detailed estimation of parameter values for the metropolitan areas of Washington (D.C.), Los Angeles, and London. Our analysis accounts for congestion, pollution, and accident externalities from automobiles and from transit vehicles; scale economies in transit supply; costs of accessing and waiting for transit service as well as service crowding costs; and agency adjustment of transit frequency, vehicle size, and route network to induced changes in demand for passenger miles. The results support the efficiency case for the large fare subsidies currently applied across mode, period, and city. In almost all cases, fare subsidies of 50 percent or more of operating costs are welfare improving at the margin, and this finding is robust to alternative assumptions and parameters.

Automobile Fuel Economy Standards: Impacts, Efficiency, and Alternatives

Abstract Environmental quotas tend to compound the welfare cost of pre-existing tax distortions in the labor market. Under plausible parameters, this source of welfare loss can easily be large enough to outweigh the entire partial equilibrium welfare gain from the quota. Environmental taxes induce the same interaction effect, however they also raise government revenues. If the revenues are used to reduce distortionary taxes, then most of this interaction effect can be offset. Therefore, revenue-raising can be a necessary condition for environmental policies to increase welfare.

Pollution Regulation and the Efficiency Gains from Technological Innovation

This article discusses automobile fuel economy standards in the United States and other countries. We first describe how these programs affect the automobile market, including impacts on fuel consumption and other dimensions of the vehicle fleet. We then review two different methodologies for assessing the costs of fuel economy programs—engineering and market-based approaches—and discuss what the results of these assessments imply for policy. Next we compare the welfare effects of fuel economy standards and fuel taxes and discuss whether these two types of policies can be complementary. Finally, we review arguments for transitioning away from fuel economy regulations and toward a “feebate” system, a policy approach that imposes fees on vehicles that are fuel inefficient and provides rebates to those that are fuel efficient.

Policy Analysis in the Presence of Distorting Taxes

Previous studies suggest a preference for emissions taxes over (non-auctioned) emissions permits and performance standards based on their potential for promoting technological innovation. We present simulation results that cast some doubt on the empirical importance of this assertion: the welfare gain induced by an emissions tax is significantly larger than that induced by other policies only in the case of very major innovations. We also find that the presence of technology spillovers per se does not necessarily imply large inefficiencies. Thus, despite spillovers, the welfare gain from additional policies to promote innovation (such as R&D subsidies) may be limited.

A second-best evaluation of eight policy instruments to reduce carbon emissions

This article first describes the new literature in environmental economics on the so-called “double-dividend” and then explores its implications for a broad range of economic issues. This literature reveals that in a second-best, general-equilibrium setting, environmental measures raise costs and prices and thereby reduce the real wage. This rise in the cost of living reduces slightly the quantity of labor supplied in an already highly distorted labor market, giving rise to losses in social welfare that can be large relative to the basic gains from a cleaner environment. These losses can be offset to some extent by using revenues (if any) from the environmental programs to reduce existing taxes on labor. This same line of analysis applies to many programs and institutions in the economy that raise the cost of living: tariffs and quotas on imports, agricultural price-support programs, monopoly pricing, programs of occupational licensure that limit entry, and many others. Thus, traditional, partial-equilibrium benefit-cost analysis appears, in many instances, to have unwittingly omitted from the calculations a potentially quite significant class of social costs.