Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Low-Carbon Economy: Why Carbon Taxes, and Not Schemes of Emission Trading, Are a Cost-Effective Economic Instrument to Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Luminița IonescuABSTRACT. I draw on a substantial body of theoretical and empirical research on carbon taxes as a cost-effective economic instrument to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and to explore this, I inspected, used, and replicated survey data from Columbia SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy, EPA, IMF, Institute for Policy Integrity/NYU, Rhodium Group, and Statista, performing analyses and making estimates regarding range of estimated percent change in energy prices in 2030 due to carbon tax, favorability of having a carbon tax among U.S. voters (%, by political views), domestic economic sectors likely to be negatively affected by climate change (%), and the most efficient way to implement the carbon dioxide emission targets set by the U.S. EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” for each individual state’s electricity sector (%). Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test the proposed conceptual model.
JEL codes: H23; H25; O13; P28; Q56
Keywords: carbon tax; emission trading; low-carbon economy; sustainability
How to cite: Ionescu, Luminița (2019). “Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Low-Carbon Economy: Why Carbon Taxes, and Not Schemes of Emission Trading, Are a Cost-Effective Economic Instrument to Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics 7(4): 35–41. doi:10.22381/JSME7420195
Received 1 July 2019 • Received in revised form 3 December 2019
Accepted 5 December 2019 • Available online 15 December 2019