• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.139-162
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• 2009

This paper confirms previous results indicating that the expenditure elasticity of demand for polluting goods plays an important role in achieving efficiency gains from tax reforms. Moreover, this paper finds that the results of the tax reforms depend not only on the size of the expenditure elasticity for the polluting goods but also on the relative size of the expenditure elasticities between polluting goods and clean goods. It also shows that in order to enhance the overall tax efficiency by the environmental tax reform, the expenditure elasticity of demand for clean goods should be larger than that of polluting goods. The result implies the following policy suggestion: When the tax authority considers green tax reforms, the expenditure elasticities should not be neglected to achieve gains in the overall efficiency of the tax system.

• Maritime Security
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.187-210
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• 2021

In recent years, many countries are committing to environmental conservation. Following this trend, successful policy implementation of SDGs with ESG management extended to the public sector is emerging as a keyword determining the success or failure of the capital market, countries, and individual companies. Accordingly, many countries are implementing various policies related to the environment. One of them is to implement national policies by introducing environmental taxes. These policies use environmental taxes to control pollution by indirectly influencing the behavior of producers or consumers through economic incentives rather than directly interfering with environmental pollution behavior. This study examines the status of environmental taxes in marine tourism sites in Korea, reviews the effectiveness of such policies, and suggests how to improve them by identifying limitations of the current system.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.145-164
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• 2009

Environmental problems, such as the depletion of natural resources, global warming, and the destruction of ecological systems, are among the most serious problems facing the planet. Since the early 1990's, many OECD countries have undertaken green tax reforms by introducing new environmental taxes to protect the environment. Environmental taxes have been used as an instrument of environmental policy more than direct regulation because economic instruments have a comparative advantage over direct regulation in terms of cost effectiveness and pollution abatement incentives. However, one important reason why green tax reforms have not progressed is due to fears regarding the negative effect of environmental taxes on international competitiveness in the industry and trade sectors. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of environmental taxes on industry and trade by using a theoretical model to compare the effects of environmental taxes on pollution-intensive and energy-saving industries.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-53
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• 2015

In environmental policy areas, a greater use of economic instruments (EIs) has recently been observed in many countries. However, EIs are heterogeneous policy tools. The textbook case of a Pigouvian tax is far from widely used, mainly due to the information requirements and other structural and institutional constraints. The successful implementation of EIs might heavily depend on pre-existing structural and institutional conditions. Moreover, these institutional conditions are particularly unfavorable in developing countries. Using a simple analytical general equilibrium model, this paper examines how these constraints affect the welfare gain from the introduction of environmental taxes in developing countries. First, this paper solves for the second-best optimal Pigouvian tax and output tax in the presence of a distortionary tax on market use of labor. The result confirms that an environmental output tax achieves a socially-efficient level of emissions in the least-cost manner only if the nature of the linkage between the tax base and the environmental damage is fixed. Second, incorporating structural and institutional constraints into the model through a set of parameter values from China and the US, this paper calculates the net welfare effects of either using the ideal Pigouvian tax or instead using an output tax. The numerical simulation results show that the net welfare gain from the use of an ideal Pigouvian tax could be more than six times larger than that of an output tax in developing countries. On the other hand, the welfare gain is only 50 percent in developed countries. This means that the potential welfare disadvantage from using output taxes instead emissions tax for environmental purposes could be much greater in the case of developing countries.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.61-89
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• 2008

In this study, by extending the model proposed by Fullerton and Kim(2006), we explored the tax interdependency effect to examine the relationship between environmental tax and economic growth. The theoretical model shows that environmental tax cannot always stimulate economic growth if other taxes such as labor or income tax are distorted by environmental taxes. However, environmental tax can boost economic growth if cutting distortionary taxes offset the distortion of taxes, or improvement of abatement knowledge can sufficiently reduce the cost of production. An empirical analysis using 14 OECD countries shows a positive relationship between the increase of implicit energy tax rate and the increase of implicit income tax rate. Meanwhile, empirical analysis does not provide enough evidence to claim that the increase of implicit energy tax decreases implicit labor tax. We can presume that environmental tax policy in Europe did not necessarily mitigate the burden of labor tax.

• Korea Petroleum Association Journal
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• no.11 s.165
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• pp.34-39
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• 1994

이 자료는 지난 9월 16일 상의 클럽에서 열린 환경경제학회주최 정책토론회 발표 내용을 간추려 옮긴 것이다. <편집자 주>

• Korea Petroleum Association Journal
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• no.11 s.165
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• pp.40-45
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• 1994

이 자료는 지난 9월 16일 상의 클럽에서 열린 환경경제학회주최 정책토론회 발표 내용을 간추려 옮긴 것이다. <편집자 주>

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.1-40
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• 2008

In this paper, I examine the welfare effects of various revenue-neutral tax reforms in the case of two vertically-related oligopolies(downstream and upstream), where the upstream industry is polluting. I show analytically when and how government can improve welfare by initiating various tax reforms, regardless of either the feasibility of a lump sum transfer or the availability of a tax on pollution. The profit wedge that is the difference between the unit price and the unit cost and the marginal environmental damages(MED) becomes important to decidethe direction of a tax reform and is crucial to determine the direction of welfare-improving tax-subsidy schemes. I also show that a tax on pollution(Pigouvian tax) is superior to a tax on intermediate good even in the case of vertically-related oligopolies, because the former always brings in positive welfare effect from the upstream firms' input substitutability, which a tax on intermediate good cannot provide. Some policy implications for 'reducing environmentally-harmful subsidies' are also discussed.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.191-204
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• 2017

Concerns on the air pollution problem caused by ambient fine particles have become a big social issue in Korea. Important factors that should be addressed to develop effective and efficient air quality management policy, especially, against fine particles are discussed and research and policy directions to address these factors are suggested. It is suggested that two factors are in high priority; one is scientific understanding of the major formation mechanisms of fine particles and the other is the process of policy decision and implementation. For the scientific understanding, smog chamber measurement, intensive field study, and chemical transport model development that can simulate the characteristics of Northeast Asia are considered to be important. For the policy directions, priority setting of the proposed policies and development and implement of effective communication sytem are considered to be important.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.93-117
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• 2011

The double dividend hypothesis of environmental taxes has been a very widely debated research topic since its introduction in the mid-80s. Unlike the second generation studies, which stated that the double dividend environmental taxes were impossible to realize, the third generation researchers of today are focused on assumptions or conditions that make the hypothesis viable. The third generation studies state that the double dividend hypothesis is possible through functional form assumptions, such as the characteristics of taxes levied on polluting goods and the overall tax efficiency of the initial tax systems. The most notable, however, is the fact that the working mechanisms of third generation studies, upon closer inspection, give homogeneous effect on the labor markets, although at first glance the third generation studies take seemingly unrelated approaches. This thesis stems from such idea, and it attempts to analyze the effects of environmental taxes on the labor market. After a thorough analysis, the results match the intuition, as the viability of the double dividend hypothesis of environmental taxes largely depends on the effects that policy changes generate on the labor market. In order for the hypothesis to be plausible, environmental tax policies have to increase the labor supply.