A Pigouvian tax (also spelled Pigovian tax) is a
tax
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...
on any
market
Market is a term used to describe concepts such as:
* Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand
* Market economy
*Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market
Geography
*Märket, a ...
activity that generates negative
externalities
In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced goods involved in either co ...
(i.e., external costs incurred by the producer that are not included in the market price). The tax is normally set by the government to correct an undesirable or inefficient
market outcome (a
market failure
In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value. Market failures can be viewed as scenarios where indiv ...
), and does so by being set equal to the external marginal cost of the negative externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, social cost includes private cost and external cost caused by negative externalities. This means the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not
efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product. Often-cited examples of negative externalities are environmental
pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...
and increased public healthcare costs associated with tobacco and
sugary drink consumption.
[.]
In the presence of positive externalities (i.e., external public benefits gained by the consumer that are not included in the market price), those who did not consent to be part of the market activity receive the benefit, and the market may under-produce. Similar logic suggests the creation of a Pigouvian subsidy to help consumers pay for socially beneficial products and encourage increased production.
An example sometimes cited is a
subsidy
A subsidy or government incentive is a form of financial aid or support extended to an economic sector (business, or individual) generally with the aim of promoting economic and social policy. Although commonly extended from the government, the ter ...
for provision of
flu vaccines.
Pigouvian taxes are named after English
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
Arthur Cecil Pigou
Arthur Cecil Pigou (; 18 November 1877 – 7 March 1959) was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the School of Economics at the University of Cambridge, he trained and influenced many Cambridge economists who went on to take chair ...
(1877–1959), who also developed the concept of economic externalities.
William Baumol
William Jack Baumol (February 26, 1922 – May 4, 2017) was an American economist. He was a professor of economics at New York University, Academic Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Professor Emeritus at Prin ...
was instrumental in framing Pigou's work in modern economics in 1972.
Pigou's original argument
In 1920, British economist
Arthur Cecil Pigou
Arthur Cecil Pigou (; 18 November 1877 – 7 March 1959) was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the School of Economics at the University of Cambridge, he trained and influenced many Cambridge economists who went on to take chair ...
wrote ''The Economics of Welfare''. In it, Pigou argues that industrialists seek their own marginal private interest. When the marginal social interest diverges from the marginal private interest, the industrialist has no incentive to internalize the cost of the marginal social cost. Conversely, Pigou argues, if an industry produces a marginal social benefit, the individuals receiving the benefit have no incentive to pay for that service. Pigou refers to these situations as incidental uncharged disservices and incidental uncharged services, respectively.
Pigou provides numerous illustrations of incidental uncharged disservices. For example, if a contractor builds a factory in the middle of a crowded neighborhood, the factory causes these incidental uncharged disservices: higher congestion, loss of light, and a loss of health for the neighbors. He also references businesses that sell alcohol. The sale of alcohol necessitates higher costs in policemen and prisons, Pigou argues, because of the crime associated with alcohol. In other words, the net private product of alcohol businesses is peculiarly large relative to the net social product of the same business. He suggests that this is why most countries tax alcohol businesses.
The divergence between the marginal private interest and the marginal social interest produces two primary results. First, as already noted, the party receiving the social benefit does not pay for it, and the one creating the social harm does not pay for it. Second, when the marginal social cost exceeds the marginal private benefit, the cost-creator over-produces the product. Ultimately, because
non-pecuniary externalities overestimate the social value, they are over-produced.
To deal with over-production, Pigou recommends a tax placed on the offending producer. If the government can accurately gauge the social cost, the tax could equalize the marginal private cost and the marginal social cost. In more specific terms, the producer would have to pay for the non-pecuniary externality that it created. This would effectively reduce the quantity of the product produced, moving the economy back to a healthy equilibrium.
Working of the Pigouvian tax
![Social cost with tax](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Social_cost_with_tax.svg)
The diagram illustrates the working of a Pigouvian tax. A tax shifts the marginal private cost curve up by the amount of the externality. If the tax is placed on the quantity of emissions from the factory, the producers have an incentive to reduce output to the socially optimum level. If the tax is placed on the percentage of emissions per unit of production, the factory has the incentive to change to cleaner processes or technology.
Lump-sum tax
In 1980, a new critique of Pigouvian taxes emerged from
Dennis Carlton
Dennis or Denis is a first or last name from the Greco-Roman name Dionysius, via one of the Saint Dionysius (disambiguation), Christian saints named Dionysius.
The name came from Dionysus, the Classical mythology, Greek god of ecstatic states, ...
and
Glenn Loury
Glenn Cartman Loury (born September 3, 1948) is an American economist, academic, and author. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005. At the age of ...
. They argued that Pigouvian taxes alone would not create an efficient outcome in the long-run, because the taxes controlled only the scale of the individual firms, not the number of firms in the particular industry. In the case of pollution, if the firms each produced a fraction of what they produced before, but the number of firms increased exponentially, the amount of pollution would still increase. To prevent this, Carlton and Loury recommend a policy with the potential to regulate the number of firms in an industry: lump-sum taxes or lump-sum subsidies.
Carlton and Loury present four basic arguments in their article. First, Pigouvian taxes work in the short-term, because the number of firms cannot vary. Second, Pigouvian taxes do not work in the long-term because the number of firms can vary. Third, an industry with a specific number of firms and scale can achieve the long-run social optimum (LRSO). The best option is to add an entry tax for potential firms and a subsidy for current firms to restrict a movement in the number of firms. Fourth, it is possible for a tax policy to create a LRSO.
Robert Kohn responded to this article in "The Limitations of Pigouvian Taxes as a Long-Run Remedy for Externalities: Comment," saying that a Pigouvian tax on pollution emissions can, in fact, create the long-run social optimum without a lump-sum tax-subsidy. Carlton and Loury responded the same month, clarifying that they were discussing a Pigouvian tax on output; whereas, Kohn was discussing a Pigouvian tax on emissions. Carlton and Loury provide numerical proofs as to why these are different. Ultimately, they argue that there are some cases in which a single tax on emissions will produce the LRSO and others in which a single tax on output will attain the LRSO. Either case only works with the taxes properly determined.
Double-dividend hypothesis
The double-dividend hypothesis proposes that a revenue-neutral substitution of environmental taxes for revenue-raising taxes might offer two benefits. The idea was first advanced by Tullock (1967) in a paper titled 'Excess Benefit'. The first benefit (or dividend) is the benefit or welfare gain resulting from a better environment and less pollution (caused by a Pigouvian tax imposed on the producer), and the second dividend or benefit is a more efficient tax system due to a reduction in the distortions of the revenue-raising tax system, which also produces an improvement in welfare. This idea received scant attention until the early 1990s when the
economics of climate change
The economics of climate change concerns the economic aspects of climate change; this can inform policies that governments might consider in response. A number of factors make this and the politics of climate change a difficult problem: it is a l ...
attracted attention to the topic of environmental taxes. The term 'double dividend' became widely used following its introduction by David Pearce in 1991. Pearce noted that estimates of the marginal excess burden (marginal distortionary cost) of existing levels of taxation in the US economy are between 20 and 50 cents per dollar of revenue collected. Because the revenue from the carbon tax would be recycled (used to lower preexisting and distorting taxes), the policy would be revenue-neutral, and the secondary benefit from revenue recycling would justify an even higher carbon tax. It is generally accepted now that the magnitude of the "revenue-recycling" benefit is lower than the 20–50 cents per dollar of revenue, but there are differing views on whether the second effect is positive or negative. The line of argument suggesting that the second "benefit" is negative proposes a previously unrecognized "tax interaction effect" (Bovenberg and de Mooij 1994).
In a 1997 paper, Don Fullerton and
Gilbert E. Metcalf
Gilbert E. Metcalf is the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and a professor of economics at Tufts University. In addition, he is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a University Fellow at ...
evaluated the double dividend hypothesis.
They define the double-dividend hypothesis as the theory that environmental taxes can improve the environment and increase economic efficiency simultaneously. Either motivation can legitimately support a tax reform. The first dividend intuitively makes sense: decreasing pollutant emissions improves the environment. The improvement in economic efficiency results from a shift away from distorting taxes such as the income tax. Fullerton and Metcalf note that for every $1 extracted in taxes, a $1.35 burden falls on the economy. In a sense, the private sector must swallow a 35 cent excess burden for no particular reason. The second dividend aims to eliminate some of this excess burden.
Tempting as it may be to try, Fullerton and Metcalf argue, the validity of the double-dividend theory cannot be established as a whole. This does not imply that the double dividend hypothesis is untenable but there is just more complication to that. An observer must evaluate each circumstance individually. Fullerton and Metcalf do provide guidelines for this analysis. Two questions help shape this analysis: what is the status quo? What are the specifics of the reform? The amount and nature of the current taxes, permits, and regulations greatly influence the results of the additional tax. Also, where the tax revenue goes greatly affects the success of the tax.
Secondly, Fullerton and Metcalf say the previous literature on Pigouvian taxes focused too heavily on the revenue dividend and too lightly on the environmental dividend of environmental taxes. Their predecessors naively value revenue too much, Fullerton and Metcalf argue, because they fail to recognize that all taxes impose costs on someone. These taxes could outweigh the environmental benefit. Thus, the government must use the Pigouvian tax revenue to lower another tax if it wants to minimize the economic damage of a tax.
Fullerton and Metcalf also mention that the effectiveness of any sort of Pigouvian tax depends on whether it supplements or replaces an existing pollution regulation. If the tax replaces a pollution regulation, it will most likely be environmentally neutral, even if it is revenue-positive. If it supplements the regulation, it may or may not be environmentally and revenue-neutral, depending on the effectiveness of the original regulation. The status quo substantially affects the outcome of a proposed tax.
Distortionary taxation
A. Lans Bovenberg and Ruud A. Mooij argue that there is a first-best case scenario and a second-best case scenario in their article "Environmental Levies and Distortionary Taxation." In the first-best case, the government does not need to get revenue from distortionary taxes such as the income tax, and the Pigouvian tax can create the long-run social optimum. In the real world, second-best case, the status quo includes an income tax that distorts the labor supply. In this situation, Bovenberg and Mooij write that the best tax comes in below the level of the Pigouvian tax.
Bovenberg and Mooij establish that households consume a dirty good (D) and a clean good (C). If the government taxes D, it can use the earned revenue to lower the labor income tax. At the same time, the tax levied on the firm will increase the price of D. The lowered income tax and the higher consumer prices even each other out, stabilizing the real net wage. But because C's price has not changed and it can substitute for D, consumers will buy C instead of D. Suddenly the government's environmental tax base has eroded and its revenue with it. The government then cannot afford to keep the labor income tax down. Bovenberg and Mooij posit that the increase in the price of goods will outweigh the slight decrease in the income tax. Labor and leisure become more interchangeable the lower the real net wage (or after-tax wage) falls. With this decrease in the real net wage, more people leave the job market. Ultimately, labor bears the cost of all public goods.
Goulder, Parry, and Burtraw agree that the net social welfare after the implementation of a tax hinges on the preexisting tax rate. Don Fullerton agreed with this analysis in 1997 in his article "Environmental Levies and Distortionary Taxation: Comment". He added that lowering the income tax and taxing the dirty good equates with raising the labor tax and subsidizing the clean product. These two policies create the same effects, Fullerton says.
In 1998, Fullerton and Gilbert E. Metcalf explain this theory more thoroughly. They begin by defining terms. The gross wage reflects the pre-tax wage a laborer receives.
The simplest form of the net wage is the pre-tax wage minus the income tax. In reality, however, the net wage is the gross wage times one minus the tax rate, all divided by the price of consumption goods. With the status quo income tax,
deadweight loss
In economics, deadweight loss is the difference in production and consumption of any given product or service including government tax. The presence of deadweight loss is most commonly identified when the quantity produced ''relative'' to the amoun ...
exists. Any addition to the price of consumption goods or an increase in the income tax extends the deadweight loss further. Either of these scenarios lowers the net wage, reducing the supply of labor offered. The supply of labor decreases because of the labor/leisure interchange. If someone gets paid very little, he or she may decide it is no longer worth his or her time to continue in that job. Thus, employment decreases. If the Pigouvian tax, which increases the price of consumption goods, replaces the income tax, Fullerton argues that the net wage is not affected.
This rejection of the double dividend hypothesis found in the "tax interaction" literature was met with surprise and skepticism among economists for a variety of reasons. There are multiple sources of ambiguity, differing definitions of what constitutes a 'double dividend', and confusion caused when comparing models with direct versus indirect tax programs, reliance on comparisons with an unreliable benchmark, and misinterpretation of notation in the literature.
Although the central question for the double dividend hypothesis and the tax interaction literature has been whether the welfare gains from environmental taxation in a second-best world are larger or smaller than in a first-best setting, the Tax Interaction literature takes this central question and frames it indirectly, by asking whether the second-best optimal environmental tax is higher or lower than the first-best Pigouvian rate. This question, too, is not answered directly, because the first-best Pigouvian rate is replaced by a definition of marginal social damages, the value of which changes with the tax level and tax program normalization. This becomes an unreliable and shifting benchmark (Jaeger 2011).
In retrospect, three factors contributed to misleading interpretations in the TI literature: an algebraic error, the use of an unreliable benchmark, and unrecognized compounding or double taxation. As a result, the conclusion that a large, previously unnoticed distortionary tax interaction effect existed can be seen as partly due to misinterpretations (Jaeger 2013).
Despite these sources of confusion, it remains the case that a) the possibility of a double dividend depends on specifics specific to the demands and the economy in which an environmental tax is being considered, and b) that the efficiency gains with revenue recycling will be greater, potentially significantly greater, than when revenues are not collected and used to reduce pre-existing revenue-raising taxes. Various research studies using numerical models find evidence in support of the double dividend hypothesis (Jorgensen et al., 2013).
Despite the recent controversy on this topic, the conclusions that can be drawn are in keeping with economic intuition. Environmental and revenue-raising taxes are complementary tools for achieving two different kinds of government goals: the provision of public goods with revenue-motivated taxes and the protection of environmental quality with corrective taxes. Indeed, the joint pursuit of these two goals through taxation can enable the government to justify doing more of each by making the optimal environmental tax higher than it would be otherwise, and by lowering the distortionary cost of financing the provision of public goods.
Alternatives
The Pigouvian tax is a method commonly used by governments as it has relatively low transaction costs associated with implementation. Other methods such as
command and control regulation
Command and Control (CAC) regulation finds common usage in academic literature and beyond. The relationship between CAC and environmental policy is considered in this article, an area that demonstrates the application of this type of regulation. Ho ...
s or subsidies assume that the government has complete knowledge of the market, which is almost never the case, and can often lead to inefficiencies and market failure through
rent-seeking
Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth without creating new wealth by manipulating the social or political environment.
Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic effi ...
behavior by individuals and firms.
No intervention (direct negotiation between parties)
Economist
Ronald Coase
Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase received a bachelor of commerce degree (1932) and a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. ...
argued that individuals can come to an agreement with an efficient result without the need for a third party when transaction costs are low. He says it is less expensive and less difficult for two neighbors to come to an agreement about a fence, the amount of noise, or the amount of smoke than it is for these two neighbors to approach a third party to solve the situation for them. Even when several parties are involved, outside interference could result in an inefficient outcome.
Yet, in dynamic settings Coasean bargaining ex post may lead to inefficient investments ex ante (the so-called
hold-up problem
In economics, the hold-up problem is central to the theory of incomplete contracts, and shows the difficulty in writing complete contracts. A hold-up problem arises when two factors are present:
#Parties to a future transaction must make noncon ...
). For this reason, some authors have argued that unconstrained Coasean bargaining may actually justify Pigouvian taxation.
Firm limits
Instead of taxing the negative externality producer, the government could regulate the production of that negative externality. Fullerton and Metcalf argue that restricting the amount of pollution that all firms in an industry can produce will indirectly reduce the output of all firms. This comprehensive supply reduction will automatically raise the consumption price of the good. These types of command-and-control restrictions stimulate cartel-like profits. Fullerton and Metcalf assert that production costs do not change, and assert that the companies can earn profits over and above what is earned before the regulations even with selling a lower quantity of goods. If the production cost of all firms increased simultaneously due to regulation, the firms may be able to increase the price uniformly. They do not consider the elasticity of products and the effect on the quantity of demand and the industry's final profits.
Cap and trade
Another alternative to applying Pigouvian taxation is for the government to place a limit on the total amount of the production of the output causing the negative externality and create a market for rights to generate that specific output. In the United States since the late 1970s, and in other developed nations since the 1980s, the concept of a market for "pollution rights" has emerged. Giving out the rights for free (or at less than market price) allows polluters to lose less profit or even gain profits (by selling their rights) relative to the unaltered market case.
Goulder, Perry, and Burtraw suggest that selling permits to firms is the best option, but recognize that many firms in the status quo are grandfathered in, meaning they are given exemptions. The authors include an example of the U.S. regulations in coal-fired electrical power plants that require the reduction of 10 million tons of sulfur dioxide emissions. They estimate that more than half of the $907 million preexisting taxes could have been eliminated by auctioning off the permits rather than grandfathering them.
Examples of Pigouvian taxes
*
Ecotax
An environmental tax, ecotax (short for ecological taxation), or green tax is a tax levied on activities which are considered to be harmful to the environment and is intended to promote environmentally friendly activities via economic incentives. ...
es
**
Carbon tax
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions required to produce goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the "hidden" social costs of carbon emissions, which are otherwise felt only in indirect ways like more sev ...
es
**
Kerosene tax
The kerosene tax (German: ''Kerosinsteuer'', French: ''taxe kérosène''; Dutch: ''kerosinetaks'') is an ecotax on the kerosene-based jet fuel in commercial aviation, which can be levied within and by the European Union. The legal basis for it ...
es
**
Severance tax
Severance taxes are taxes imposed on the removal of natural resources within a taxing jurisdiction. Severance taxes are most commonly imposed in oil producing states within the United States. Resources that typically incur severance taxes when e ...
es
**
Land value tax
A land value tax (LVT) is a levy on the value of land (economics), land without regard to buildings, personal property and other land improvement, improvements. It is also known as a location value tax, a point valuation tax, a site valuation ta ...
es (LVT) on the unimproved value of land
*
Taxes on congestion
* Plastic taxes (e.g on plastic bags)
*
Fat tax
A fat tax is a tax or surcharge that is placed upon fattening food, beverages or on overweight individuals. It is considered an example of Pigovian taxation. A fat tax aims to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the economic costs of obesi ...
es
*
Meat tax
A meat tax is a tax levied on meat and/or other animal products to help cover the health and environmental costs that result from using animals for food. Livestock is known to significantly contribute to global warming, and to negatively impact ...
es
*
Sugar taxes
*
Tobacco taxes
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and ingesting the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or simply released from the mouth, as is generally done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed ...
, mainly due to
passive smoking
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called secondhand smoke (SHS), or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by persons other than the intended "active" smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke enters an environment, causing its inhalat ...
* Cannabis taxes, mainly due to
passive smoking
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called secondhand smoke (SHS), or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by persons other than the intended "active" smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke enters an environment, causing its inhalat ...
*
Alcohol taxes
*
Sin tax
A sin tax is an excise tax specifically levied on certain goods deemed harmful to society and individuals, such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, candies, soft drinks, fast foods, coffee, sugar, gambling, and pornography. In contrast to Pigovian tax ...
es in general
*
Luxury tax
A luxury tax is a tax on luxury goods: products not considered essential. A luxury tax may be modeled after a sales tax or VAT, charged as a percentage on all items of particular classes, except that it mainly directly affects the wealthy becau ...
es
*
Tobin tax
A Tobin tax was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. It was suggested by James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Tobin's tax was originally intended to penali ...
against speculation in the financial markets
Criticisms
Most of the criticism of the Pigouvian tax relates to the determination of the tax and the implementation. Pigou and
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...
point out that the assumption that the government can determine the marginal social cost of a negative externality and convert that amount into a monetary value is a weakness of the Pigouvian tax.
William Baumol
William Jack Baumol (February 26, 1922 – May 4, 2017) was an American economist. He was a professor of economics at New York University, Academic Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Professor Emeritus at Prin ...
suggests that the measurement of social cost is almost impossible.
Ronald Coase
Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase received a bachelor of commerce degree (1932) and a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. ...
argues that all social costs are reciprocal in nature, so, once the tax is set, it must not be changed. Some point out that political factors can complicate the implementation of a Pigouvian tax, while others that the Pigouvian tax focuses solely on the market for the product that is responsible for the externality but does not take into account the interconnections with other markets, such as the labor market.
Measurement problem
Arthur Pigou said: "It must be confessed, however, that we seldom know enough to decide in what fields and to what extent the State, on account of
he gaps between private and public costs
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
could interfere with individual choice." In other words, the economist's blackboard "model" assumes knowledge we don't possess it's a model with assumed "givens" which are in fact ''not'' given to anyone.
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Haye ...
would argue that this is knowledge which could not be provided as a "given" by any "method" yet discovered, due to insuperable cognitive limits.
William Baumol
William Jack Baumol (February 26, 1922 – May 4, 2017) was an American economist. He was a professor of economics at New York University, Academic Director of the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Professor Emeritus at Prin ...
as well as Polodoo (2008) have argued that it is extraordinarily difficult to measure the social costs of any externality, especially because many costs are psychological and individual. Even if a measurement of the psychological effect of some externality did exist, it would be impossible to collect that data for all individuals affected and then find the optimum output level. Since it is not possible to find the optimum output level, it is not possible to find the optimum Pigouvian tax level to achieve that optimum. In the end, Baumol argues that the best solution is to set a minimum standard of acceptability for negative externalities and create tax systems to achieve those minimum standards. Baumol points out that government committees have a tradition of agreeing on minimum standards, so the practicality of this solution is reasonable.
Peter Boettke
Peter Joseph Boettke (; born January 3, 1960) is an American economist of the Austrian School. He is currently a professor of economics and philosophy at George Mason University; the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, vice president for ...
brings forth that "The Pigouvian remedy was to bring marginal private costs (subjectively understood) into line with marginal social costs (objectively understood). The problem,
James M. Buchanan
James McGill Buchanan Jr. (; October 3, 1919 – January 9, 2013) was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory originally outlined in his most famous work co-authored with Gordon Tullock in 1962, ''The Calculus of Consen ...
pointed out, was that the analyst had to specify the conditions under which objectively measurable costs could be ascertained by economic and policy actors. In general competitive equilibrium, there are also no deviations between marginal private costs and marginal social costs. In other words, Buchanan (like
Ronald Coase
Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase received a bachelor of commerce degree (1932) and a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. ...
) pointed out that Pigouvian tax remedies are either possible and redundant or impossible to set because the conditions presupposed for their establishment either eliminate their necessity or (if absent) preclude their enactment." In other words, "
Karen I. Vaughn has pointed out the dilemma involved in this situation. To calculate the appropriate corrective tax, the policymaker must know the equilibrium price; yet the situation demanding correction implies a disequilibrium situation."
Reciprocal cost problem
Ronald Coase
Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase received a bachelor of commerce degree (1932) and a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. ...
argues that the tax placed on an industry creating a negative externality should not be changed after it is implemented. The crux of his argument is that all social costs are reciprocal in nature. Coase argues that a factory emitting smoke is not entirely responsible for the social harm of smoky air. If the factory were not there, no one would suffer from smoky air, and if the people were not there, no one would suffer from smoky air. Because of this reciprocity of harm, Coase argues that neither party bears sole responsibility for the social harm, so neither party should pay the full cost.
The social harm gets worse, Coase argues, if only one offender pays for the social harm. If the smoke-emitting factory must pay dearly for all its smoke, it will reduce its quantity of production or buy the necessary technology to reduce its smoke rate. With the advent of clean air, neighbors may move into the area. This immediately increases the marginal social cost of smoke, which would require a tax increase on the factory. Essentially, each time the tax increases, the population increases and the marginal cost of the status quo increases again, so the factory is punished for making conditions good enough that people want to move there.
One complexity of this situation is the multiple local maxima or the interchangeable best-case scenarios. It all hinges on the numbers. If the cost of abating all smoke is more than the cost to move the neighbors out, the neighbors should move out and let the factory continue emitting smoke. On the other hand, if it costs less to abate the smoke than to move the neighbors, then the factory ought to pay the tax or buy the clean technology to provide clean air for the surrounding residents. Once the optimum solution is implemented, Coase argues that the tax should not change, regardless of changing circumstances. In this case, if a tax is imposed on the factory and some more neighbors move in, the factory tax should not increase.
Political problem
Political factors such as lobbying of government by
polluter
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the ...
s may also tend to reduce the level of the tax levied, which will tend to reduce the mitigating effect of the tax; lobbying of government by special interests who calculate the negative utility of the externality higher than others may also tend to increase the level of the tax levied, which will tend to result in a sub-optimal level of production.
Political factors can result in complementary problems when pollution opponents assert irrationally high levels of harm or operate from a hidden agenda of extirpating the polluting agent regardless of the prospects for regulating it to cause minimal harm; regulators are then driven to set absurdly high tax levels, possibly high enough to effectively prohibit operation.
Similarly, lobbyists whose agendas are entirely orthogonal to pollution reduction per se might intervene with regulators to drive tax rates higher or lower, thus preventing optimal operation of the tax. Likely instances of such include organizations intending to lower the polluter's market value as part of a pending plan to buy out its parent entity. Alternatively, there might be efforts to drive the polluter's market value higher prior to its sale. Familiar real-world examples of groups intervening for reason unrelated to pollution reduction include opponents of the polluter's (or the polluter's parent organization's) labor practices and groups with seemingly dogmatic opposition to anything connected to nuclear energy.
Earl A. Thompson and Ronald Batchelder cited one political problem with Pigouvian taxes being that if a firm can influence the tax rate or regulations put on it, the results will not be as certain as Pigou and Baumol suggested. Baumol responded to this, saying that almost all discussions on Pigouvian taxes include the assumption of pure competition.
This certainly does alter the scenario, but the literature had not ignored it; it had merely used a different set of assumptions.
Thomas A. Barthold argues in 1994 that actual policy decisions often come from budget requirements, not a concern for the environment.
[Barthold, Thomas A. (1994). "Issues in the Design of Environmental Excise Taxes," The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(1): 133–151.] The taxes do not always parallel raw economic theory because social benefits and costs are hard to measure. He uses the 1989 Montreal Protocol as an example. President George H. W. Bush signed this protocol that allowed either a permit auction or a tax on ozone-depleting chemicals. Barthold attributes the decision to implement the tax to the pressure on the Ways and Means committee to come up with more consistent revenue.
The tax policy also did not accord with basic common sense economic principles. For one, it makes sense to impose a tax on the industry that creates the pollution problem, on the activity that emits the harmful chemicals. This particular activity happened to be the use of automobiles with leaky compressor systems, but because of the high administration cost of taxing that many people, the government decided to tax the producers of those chemicals, though they contributed nothing to the actual problems of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere.
Another evidence of the alternative motivations for this policy is the fact that the base tax increases annually. Does the harm from chlorofluorocarbons increase every year and in the same increment? Who is to say that $1.37 per pound of chlorofluorocarbons is an accurate description of the marginal social cost of pollution? The conspicuous hike in the tax in 1992 that equalized the Energy Policy Act's budget ignited Barthold's suspicions. Additionally, exporting firms should not receive exemptions from environmental taxes simply because they are exporting goods. If the motivation for this tax was simply the first dividend, environmental improvement, then all firms, whether or not they export, would be taxed.
Aside from this frustration, Barthold noted that politicians often prefer regulations with obvious benefits and hidden costs over regulations with hidden benefits and obvious costs. This is one reason why politicians often prefer to hand out permits to firms rather than impose a tax on them, even though the tax is more economically efficient. Free permits create winners of grandfathered firms and losers of the consumer who has to pay more for the same product. According to Barthold, taxation makes losers of the factory producers and indirect winners of the consumers.
See also
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Carbon trading
Emission trading (ETS) for carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) is a form of carbon pricing; also known as cap and trade (CAT) or carbon pricing. It is an approach to limit climate change by creating a market with limited ...
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CC–PP game
The Commonize Costs–Privatize Profits Game (or CC–PP Game) is a concept developed by the ecologist Garrett Hardin to describe a "game" (in the game theory sense) widely played in matters of resource allocation.Hardin, G. (1985). ''Filters Aga ...
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Coase theorem
In law and economics, the Coase theorem () describes the economic efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities. The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are sufficiently low trans ...
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Container deposit legislation
Container-deposit legislation (also known as a container-deposit scheme, deposit-refund system or scheme, deposit-return system, or bottle bill) is any law that requires the collection of a monetary deposit on beverage containers (refillable or ...
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Deposit-refund system A deposit-refund system (DRS), also known as deposit-return system, advance deposit fee or deposit-return scheme, is a surcharge on a product when purchased and a rebate when it is returned. A well-known example is when container deposit legislation ...
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Geolibertarianism
Geolibertarianism is a political and economic ideology that integrates libertarianism with Georgism. It favors a taxation system based (as in Georgism) on income derived from land and natural resources instead of on labor, coupled with a mini ...
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Georgism
Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including ...
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Pigou Club The Pigou Club is described by its creator, economist Gregory Mankiw, as "an elite group of economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes."
Description
Thes ...
(also called "UDAY" parties in Asia)
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Priority Sector Lending Certificates Priority Sector Lending Certificates is a tool for promoting comparative advantages among banks while they meet their priority sector lending obligations in India. "Banks with a comparative advantage in lending to the priority sector should earn pri ...
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Polluter pays principle
In environmental law, the polluter pays principle is enacted to make the party responsible for producing pollution responsible for paying for the damage done to the natural environment. It is regarded as a regional custom because of the strong supp ...
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Sin tax
A sin tax is an excise tax specifically levied on certain goods deemed harmful to society and individuals, such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, candies, soft drinks, fast foods, coffee, sugar, gambling, and pornography. In contrast to Pigovian tax ...
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Social cost
Social cost in neoclassical economics is the sum of the private costs resulting from a transaction and the costs imposed on the consumers as a consequence of being exposed to the transaction for which they are not compensated or charged. In other w ...
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Soda tax
A sugary drink tax, soda tax, or sweetened beverage tax (SBT) is a tax or surcharge (food-related fiscal policy) designed to reduce consumption of sweetened beverages. Drinks covered under a soda tax often include carbonated soft drinks, spo ...
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Tax choice
In public choice theory, tax choice (sometimes called taxpayer sovereignty, earmarking, or fiscal subsidiarity) is the belief that individual taxpayers should have direct control over how their taxes are spent. Its proponents apply the theory of ...
References
Further reading
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* Pigou, A.C
II, Chapter IX: Divergences Between Marginal Social Net Product and Marginal Private Net Productin ''The Economics of Welfare'' (1932)
External links
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