Economics Commons^™

The Two-Part Instrument In A Second-Best World, Don Fullerton, Ann Wolverton

Don Fullerton

Standard Pigovian tax theory has been extended in two directions. First, many polluting activities are difficult to tax because they are not market transactions, and so recent papers have shown that the same effects can be achieved by use of a two-part instrument (2PI): a tax on output or income and a subsidy for clean alternatives to pollution. It is a generalization of a deposit-refund system. Second, a different literature concerns the second-best pollution tax in the presence of other tax distortions. Here, we combine the two extensions by looking at the second-best 2PI. When government needs revenue, is the …