I was reading my email and eating a blueberry muffin this morning and ran across this in my inbox:
Designing a Carbon Tax to Reduce U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Gilbert E. Metcalf
Rev Environ Econ Policy published 6 November 2008, 10.1093/reep/ren015
http://reep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/ren015v1?papetoc
I then took a sip of coffee, clicked on the link and read the abstract:
This article describes a revenue and distributionally neutral approach to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that uses a carbon tax. The revenue from the carbon tax is used to finance an environmental earned income tax credit designed to be distributionally neutral. The credit is linked to earned income and helps offset the regressivity of the carbon tax. The carbon tax reform proposal is also revenue neutral and avoids conflating carbon policy with debates over the appropriate size of the federal budget. The article provides a distributional analysis of the proposal and also makes a number of political, economic, and administrative arguments in favor of a carbon tax and responds to the arguments that have commonly been made against using a tax-based approach to reducing U.S. emissions.
Then I thought that this looks like a good companion piece to Stavins' cap-and-trade article in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy.
Note: I didn't have time to write this post until after I got my 9:30 class started on the exam. I'm currently continuing to obsess over my email instead of refereeing a paper while proctoring the exam. Oh yes, I'm also thinking about getting another cup of coffee after class (instead of reviewing my notes on discounting for my benefit-cost analysis class).
From the inbox update:
... just FYI the Metcalf and Stavins paper originated as a pair of papers presented jointly at Hamilton Project event on the economics of climate change about a year ago. So we fully agree that they make good companions! The event and papers are at http://www.brookings.edu/events/2007/1030climateofchange.aspx.