题目：碳税、工业产出、社会福利和环境(Carbon taxes, industrial production, welfare and the environment)

作者：Presley K.Wesseh Jr.，林伯强*，Philip Atsagli

期刊：能源(Energy)

详细：123卷，2017年3月15日，305-313页

DOI：https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2017.01.139

文献导读：

全球气候变化问题引起了广泛关注，温室气体减排已成为一个热议的话题。征收碳税是控制温室气体排放的最佳策略之一。然而，碳税对边际减排成本以及对化石燃料需求的变化非常敏感。在以往文献中，碳税包括指挥控制、基于价格以及基于数量三种机制，但哪种是最有效的减排机制目前仍然存在争议。同时，以往的文献并未对引入碳税政策是否能够提高环境或经济收益提供明显的证据。

本文的研究目标是讨论最佳碳税税率以及评估均衡碳税对经济和环境的影响。由于以往大多数文献对模拟碳税可靠性的讨论仍不一致，因此有必要对这些问题进行进一步研究。

本文的研究路径包括：首先计算了各部门的最优税率，然后分析了其对生产和环境质量的影响。本研究允许经济生产和环境之间存在权衡，而这种权衡源自于碳税的平衡。文章结论可以为评估可再生能源发展方案提供有价值的依据。

Abstract:

Conventional wisdom holds that, ignoring environmental benefits, carbon taxes should adversely affect low-income countries more than they should affect high-income regions. Simulating various ranges of optimal carbon taxes and testing their impacts, this study draws an opposite conclusion to the above assertion. However, when the model is adjusted to reflect benefits from environmental cleanup, carbon taxes create welfare gains in all regions except for low-income countries. In addition, implementing carbon taxes reduces environmental damages by approximately 50% in absolutely all the six regions considered. Notwithstanding the existence of a tradeoff between welfare and environment for low-income countries implies that energy conservation policies aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions would leave people worse-off in these countries.

Keywords: Optimal carbon pricing; Environmental externalities; Policy modeling; Welfare