IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oaefxx/doi10.1080-23322039.2014.946999.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is it environmentally desirable to encourage public transport through taxes? Evidence for Spanish households

Author

Listed:
  • Desiderio Romero-Jordán
  • José Félix Sanz
  • Mercedes Burguillo

Abstract

There are studies that suggests that the use of environmental taxes to promote the consumption of "clean goods" could have unwanted effects in that it leads to the consumption of "dirty goods". The results will depend on the multiple effects of cross-price elasticities. This paper illustrates the above hypothesis as applied to earth transport consumption in Spanish households. Using microdata for Spanish households, we firstly estimate an AIDS model for 16 groups of goods and services. And secondly simulate two alternative revenue-neutral tax reforms in which the relative price of public transport, in terms of private transport, is reduced between 1 and 2%. The results confirm Sandmo's hypothesis. With both reforms, fuel consumption (as measure of private transport use) increases and public transport consumption decreases. The consequence in each case is a net increase in CO 2 emissions per household. So, fiscal reforms of this kind do not seem to be effective to improve the environmental performance of passengers earth transport sector in Spain.

Suggested Citation

  • Desiderio Romero-Jordán & José Félix Sanz & Mercedes Burguillo, 2014. "Is it environmentally desirable to encourage public transport through taxes? Evidence for Spanish households," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-9, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:doi:10.1080/23322039.2014.946999
    DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2014.946999
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2014.946999
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/23322039.2014.946999?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nash, Chris & Sansom, Tom & Still, Ben, 2001. "Modifying transport prices to internalise externalities: evidence from European case studies," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 413-431, July.
    2. Bresson, Georges & Dargay, Joyce & Madre, Jean-Loup & Pirotte, Alain, 2003. "The main determinants of the demand for public transport: a comparative analysis of England and France using shrinkage estimators," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 605-627, August.
    3. Espey, Molly, 1998. "Gasoline demand revisited: an international meta-analysis of elasticities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 273-295, June.
    4. Javier Asensio & Anna Matas & José-Luis Raymond, 2003. "Redistributive effects of subsidies to urban public transport in Spain," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 433-452, July.
    5. Daniel J. Graham & Stephen Glaister, 2002. "The Demand for Automobile Fuel: A Survey of Elasticities," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 36(1), pages 1-25, January.
    6. Deaton, Angus S & Muellbauer, John, 1980. "An Almost Ideal Demand System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 312-326, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bakhat, Mohcine & Labandeira, Xavier & Labeaga, José M. & López-Otero, Xiral, 2017. "Elasticities of transport fuels at times of economic crisis: An empirical analysis for Spain," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 66-80.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Labandeira, Xavier & Labeaga, José M. & López-Otero, Xiral, 2017. "A meta-analysis on the price elasticity of energy demand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 549-568.
    2. Ling-Yun He & Sheng Yang & Dongfeng Chang, 2017. "Oil Price Uncertainty, Transport Fuel Demand and Public Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-19, March.
    3. Romero-Jordán, Desiderio & del Río, Pablo & Jorge-García, Marta & Burguillo, Mercedes, 2010. "Price and income elasticities of demand for passenger transport fuels in Spain. Implications for public policies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 3898-3909, August.
    4. Pablo del Río & Desiderio Romero & Marta Jorge & Mercedes Burguillo, 2012. "Territorial differences for transport fuel demand in Spain: an econometric study," Chapters, in: Larry Kreiser & Ana Yábar Sterling & Pedro Herrera & Janet E. Milne & Hope Ashiabor (ed.), Green Taxation and Environmental Sustainability, chapter 4, pages 56-68, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Sheng Yang & Ling-Yun He, 2015. "Oil price shocks, road transport pollution emissions and residents' health losses in China," Papers 1512.01742, arXiv.org.
    6. Kurt Kratena & Ina Meyer & Michael Wüger, 2009. "Ökonomische, technologische und soziodemographische Einflussfaktoren der Energienachfrage," WIFO Monatsberichte (monthly reports), WIFO, vol. 82(7), pages 525-538, July.
    7. Donna, Javier D., 2018. "Measuring Long-Run Price Elasticities in Urban Travel Demand," MPRA Paper 90059, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Moshiri, Saeed & Aliyev, Kamil, 2017. "Rebound effect of efficiency improvement in passenger cars on gasoline consumption in Canada," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 330-341.
    9. Jaeger, William K. & Egelkraut, Thorsten M., 2011. "Biofuel economics in a setting of multiple objectives and unintended consequences," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(9), pages 4320-4333.
    10. Gallet, Craig A., 2010. "The income elasticity of meat: a meta-analysis," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 1-14.
    11. Thomas M. Fullerton, Jr. & Jorge A. Ibarra Salazar & Mario Elizalde, 2015. "Microeconomic Gasoline Consumption Anomalies in Mexico: 1997-2007," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(4), pages 709-722, April.
    12. Ian W. H. Parry & Kenneth A. Small, 2005. "Does Britain or the United States Have the Right Gasoline Tax?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1276-1289, September.
    13. Shaw, Charles, 2020. "Econometric Analysis of Demand for Petrol in India, 1966-2019," MPRA Paper 104797, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Wang, H. & Zhou, D.Q. & Zhou, P. & Zha, D.L., 2012. "Direct rebound effect for passenger transport: Empirical evidence from Hong Kong," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 162-167.
    15. Mohammad Vesal & Amir Hossein Tavakoli & Mohammad H. Rahmati, 2022. "What do one hundred million transactions tell us about demand elasticity of gasoline?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(6), pages 2693-2711, June.
    16. Alatorre, José Eduardo & Galindo, Luis Miguel & Samaniego, Joseluis, 2015. "Meta-analysis of the income and price elasticities of gasoline demand: public policy implications for Latin America," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    17. Dimitropoulos, Alexandros & Oueslati, Walid & Sintek, Christina, 2018. "The rebound effect in road transport: A meta-analysis of empirical studies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 163-179.
    18. Santos, Gervásio F., 2013. "Fuel demand in Brazil in a dynamic panel data approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 229-240.
    19. Tilov, Ivan & Weber, Sylvain, 2023. "Heterogeneity in price elasticity of vehicle kilometers traveled: Evidence from micro-level panel data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PA).
    20. Yang, Dujuan & Timmermans, Harry, 2013. "Analysis of influence of fuel price on individual activity-travel time expenditure," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 40-55.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:oaefxx:doi:10.1080/23322039.2014.946999. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/OAEF20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.