Taxing Automobile Emissions for Pollution Control

This innovative book examines the role an automobile emissions tax could play in reducing emissions in the United States. The author concludes that an emissions tax has the potential to reduce emissions from households vehicles significantly, even when travel demand is relatively price inelastic. Beginning with a theoretical discussion of a first-best tax, a second-best tax on passenger vehicles is developed. This study contains detailed analyses of:

• the design of the tax
• behavioural responses that lead to emissions reductions, including reductions in the household's vehicle miles of travel and the scrapping of low-value, high emitting vehicles
• the effect of the tax on the reduction of emissions
• the effect of the tax on households in different income quintiles
• the emissions reducing potential of a gasoline tax compared to an emissions tax

This study uses a simulation model to analyse the sensitivity of travel demand and the resulting emissions, to different tax rates and demand elasticities. The author concludes that an emissions tax has the potential to reduce emissions from household vehicles significantly, even when travel demand is relatively price inelastic.

Taxing Automobile Emissions for Pollution Control will prove invaluable to policymakers and academics in the field of environmental management and environmental economics and policy.