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Subsidizing Non-Polluting Goods Vs. Taxing Polluting Goods For Pollution Reduction, Robert S. Main
Subsidizing Non-Polluting Goods Vs. Taxing Polluting Goods For Pollution Reduction, Robert S. Main
Scholarship and Professional Work - Business
Pigovian taxes on polluters are politically unpopular, but subsidies for non-polluting sources are politically attractive. This paper presents a linear demand and supply model and numerical example to explore the trade-offs between taxing polluting sources of a good versus subsidizing non-polluting sources of the same good. While the model (along with the associated numerical example) shows the optimality of Pigovian taxes, it also shows how much welfare is reduced if subsidies for nonpolluters are employed instead. Further, it shows the optimal tax, given any level of subsidy and the optimal subsidy, given any level of tax.
Simple Pigovian Taxes Vs. Emission Fees To Control Negative Externalities: A Pedagogical Note, Robert S. Main
Simple Pigovian Taxes Vs. Emission Fees To Control Negative Externalities: A Pedagogical Note, Robert S. Main
Scholarship and Professional Work - Business
Many economics texts introduce their analysis of negative externalities by examining a tax on the output of polluting firms, sometimes called a "simple Pigovian tax," often pointing out that taxing pollution directly is superior to taxing output and proceeding to discuss an emission tee as an alternative. They do not show how and why an emission fee is more efficient than an output tax. This note presents a numerical example allowing comparison of the welfare effects of the two approaches, as well as showing why simply reducing the pollution intensity of polluters' output would be inferior to an emission fee.
Polluters’ Profits And Political Response: Direct Control Versus Taxes: Comment, Robert S. Main, Charles W. Baird
Polluters’ Profits And Political Response: Direct Control Versus Taxes: Comment, Robert S. Main, Charles W. Baird
Scholarship and Professional Work - Business
In a recent issue of this Review, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (B-T) presented a public choice analysis of the relative merits of direct controls and taxes in externality control. In Section IV of their paper, B-T consider the case of reciprocal external diseconomies of consumption. They ask whether "... persons in this sort of interaction, acting through the political processes of the community, will impose on themselves either a penalty tax or direct regulation" (p. 143). Their analysis is carried out within the context of a two-person model in which each person consumes the same quantity of a …