The Role of Pollutee Taxes in Externality Problems
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9728391 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marvin Kraus, Herbert Mohring |
| Year | 1975 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 166 |
| Pages | 171 |
| Publication date | 1975-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Economica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2553591 |
| OpenAlex | W2080166543 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 1 |
Although disagreements remain regarding how charges should be assessed and the resulting revenues distributed, the standard prescription for dealing with technological externalities has long been to incorporate them into the pricing system. A serious problem exists in filling this prescription. Real world externalities involve multiple local optima and interrelationships that are both complex and changing. This being the case, it would be impossibly costly to obtain the information required to design a pricing system for externalities that would enable moving in one step from an existing, nonoptimum allocation of resources to a globally optimum allocation. Several writers, partly with these information costs in mind, have analysed the allocative effects of schemes in which tax rates are altered recursively to reflect changes in current damage levels induced by adjustments to prior taxes. If these adjustment processes could be shown to converge to a social optimum, their much smaller information requirements would make them very attractive (ignoring the wastes and irreversibilities they might entail). At least two arguments for taxing pollutees (i.e. those damaged by technological externalities) as well as polluters are suggested by these analyses. First, a passage in Coase (1960, p. 42) suggests the following sort of rationalization: a tax-induced reduction in the emissions of a smoky factory would make its environs more attractive for dwellings. An increase in the number of factory neighbours would increase the harm done by the marginal puff of smoke and therefore increase the marginal tax and the costs incurred by the factory to reduce emissions. Efficiency might seem to dictate taxing neighbours, thereby forcing
Economics · Externality · Microeconomics · Monetary economics · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,08 |
| Citation span | 1977 - 2017 (41) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |