Cherry picking from other blogs on the weekend: From Vox Baby, a post on comparing the effects of CAFE standards and gas taxes (Academic Work on Cafe). After reading Goldberg (J Ind Econ, 1998, link at JStor) he concludes:
CAFE standards have not been particularly effective, but the gas tax required to mimic their effects on utilization would have to be pretty steep.
More recent research (Fullerton and West, JEEM, 2002) suggests that a gas tax would be effective/efficient (efficiency maximizes the differences between the benefits and the costs). But, yes, the efficient gas tax would be steep. Ian Parry at RFF says it would be about $1.
I've read several places, not at Vox Baby, the excuse that since gas taxes are politically infeasible and CAFE standards are feasible then we should embrace the standards. Not many economists buy into that argument, I don't think. Even so, I'm not sure if it is a good idea to try to convince non-economists otherwise.
