Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Federal Tax Policy Towards Energy, Gilbert E. Metcalf

Gilbert E. Metcalf

On Aug. 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PL 109-58). This was the first major piece of energy legislation enacted since 1992 following five years of Congressional efforts to pass energy legislation. Among other things, the law contains tax incentives worth over $14 billion between 2005 and 2015. These incentives represent both pre-existing initiatives that the law extends as well as new initiatives.

In this paper I survey federal tax energy policy focusing both on programs that affect energy supply and demand. I briefly discuss the distributional and incentive impacts of many of these incentives. …

A Comment On The Role Of Prices For Excludable Public Goods (With Jongsang Park)., Gilbert E. Metcalf

Gilbert E. Metcalf

Blomquist and Christensen [(2005). The role of prices for excludable public goods, International Tax and Public Finance, 12 ,61-79] argue that welfare is initially decreasing in the price of an excludable public good and that the case for a positive price for an excludable public good price is weak. We argue that this result follows from their particular characterization of the public good and that an alternative and equally reasonable characterization overturns their result. Hence, the policy case for a positive price on the public good is stronger than Blomquist and Christiansen suggest.