Harry Clarke

John Quiggin recently (i) attacked consumption-based bases for levying carbon charges and (ii) defended cap-and-trade schemes against ‘equivalent’ carbon tax schemes.  On (ii) I don’t substantively disagree but on (i) I do. I responded on his blog. Here is an improved statement of my position.

I have not regarded the issue of choosing between a ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme and a ‘carbon tax’ for managing carbon emissions as one of first-order importance.   Under certain conditions setting carbon quotas and auctioning them off at some equilibrium price has exactly the same effect as setting a tax on carbon equal to the equilibrium price. [...]

My blogging activity has recently come to a standstill because of a myriad of work-related commitments. I am attending  the Australia’s Future Tax and Transfer Policy Conference  that has been organised by The Treasury over the next couple of days at the Melbourne Business School.  The papers to be presented are uniformly excellent - I have even  thought [...]

If you are a bit hazy on how to levy income and excise taxes – and have not followed recent debates - I recommend this paper by Gregory Mankiw and others.  It is a straightforward presentation of key ideas and is recommended.  I posted earlier on some shockingly revolutionary work of Louis Kaplow that I found most interesting who treats things more [...]