Inge Mayeres

The marginal external costs of urban transport

A necessary input for the analysis of efficient transport policies is the marginal external cost of each transport mode. This paper studies the marginal external costs of urban transportation. These include the marginal external cost of congestion, accidents, air pollution and noise. The costs are computed for cars, buses, trams, metro and trucks. The methodology is described and applied to the urban area of Brussels for the year 2005.

Marginal tax reform, externalities and income distribution

The paper examines welfare improving and revenue neutral directions marginal policy reforms for an economy with nonidentical individuals and an externality that has a feedback effect on the consumption of taxed goods. It considers three types of policy instruments: the indirect taxes, the uniform poll transfer and public abatement. This extends the framework set up by Ahmad and Stern (1984), Bovenberg and de Mooij (1994) and Schob (1996). The theoretical model is illustrated for a specific externality, namely congestion caused by peak car transport.

Optimal Tax and Public Investment Rules for Congestion Type of Externalities

Optimal government policy is considered in a second-best framework where consumers and producers cause an externality of the congestion type and income distribution issues are taken into account. The theoretical results of the optimal tax literature are adapted using the concept of the net social Pigouvian tax. An illustrative AGE model uncovers the relative importance of its components. The model demonstrates that the level of the externality tax does not depend strongly on distribution concerns, as reoptimization of the other taxes ensures that the income distribution objective is reached. The model also allows the authors to study the interaction between externality taxes and public abatement. Copyright 1997 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

The geneva hydrocarbon protocol: Economic insights from a belgian perspective

This paper extends the methodology for the economic analysis of tropospheric ozone regulation reported in Repetto (1987). Firstly, the acid rain objective is explicitly incorporated by assigning an additional benefit to the acidifying precursors of ozone. Secondly, we introduce the transboundary dimension which is of particular importance to Europe. The methodology is applied to the evaluation of the costs and benefits of the Geneva Protocol on hydrocarbons for Belgium.