IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tcpoxx/v15y2015i4p475-493.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Firm responses to a carbon price: corporate decision making under British Columbia's carbon tax

Author

Listed:
  • Adam G. Bumpus

Abstract

Top-down economic approaches theoretically show that placing a price on carbon can reduce emissions. Responses by firms to these policies, however, are less well understood and are critical for understanding the effectiveness of price-based carbon policy. This article provides an analysis of firm-level responses to the carbon tax in British Columbia (BC) through empirical research of grey literature, industry participation, and interviews with executives of major emitting firms in BC. The article highlights the empirical responses to the tax by firms, who experience difficulty in making low-carbon changes in response to fluctuating commodity prices, the low certainty of climate policy over temporal and spatial scales, and the political economy of implementing regional climate policy. It also highlights the importance of understanding firm-level responses as a complementary approach to macro-economic policy making on carbon pricing. The article shows the importance of engaging decision makers in corporations to understand how carbon is governed in light of emerging climate policy. Policy relevance This article is relevant to policy makers implementing carbon-pricing initiatives by illustrating the need to complement macroeconomic models with firm-level response analysis. It also demonstrates the key concerns of executives in a resource extractive economy and the ability of a carbon price, and the need for complementary technology funds and policy, to affect change in industrial emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam G. Bumpus, 2015. "Firm responses to a carbon price: corporate decision making under British Columbia's carbon tax," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 475-493, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:15:y:2015:i:4:p:475-493
    DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2014.937389
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14693062.2014.937389
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14693062.2014.937389?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.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Franziska Klein & Jeroen van den Bergh, 2021. "The employment double dividend of environmental tax reforms: exploring the role of agent behaviour and social interaction," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 189-213, April.
    2. Matthew P. Johnson & Theresa S. Rötzel & Brigitte Frank, 2023. "Beyond conventional corporate responses to climate change towards deep decarbonization: a systematic literature review," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 921-954, June.
    3. Lin, Boqiang & Jia, Zhijie, 2018. "The energy, environmental and economic impacts of carbon tax rate and taxation industry: A CGE based study in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 558-568.
    4. Vít Pászto & Jarmila Zimmermannová & Jolana Skaličková & Judit Sági, 2020. "Spatial Patterns in Fiscal Impacts of Environmental Taxation in the EU," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-18, November.
    5. Hu, Yingde & Bai, Wensong & Farrukh, Muhammad & Koo, Chun Kwong, 2023. "How does environmental policy uncertainty influence corporate green investments?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    6. Jia, Zhijie & Lin, Boqiang & Liu, Xiying, 2023. "Rethinking the equity and efficiency of carbon tax: A novel perspective," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 346(C).
    7. Dewan Muktadir‐Al‐Mukit & Firoz Haroon Bhaiyat, 2024. "Impact of corporate governance diversity on carbon emission under environmental policy via the mandatory nonfinancial reporting regulation," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 1397-1417, February.
    8. Jared Cory & Michael Lerner & Iain Osgood, 2021. "Supply Chain Linkages and the Extended Carbon Coalition," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 69-87, January.
    9. Blanco, Christian C. & Caro, Felipe & Corbett, Charles J., 2020. "Do carbon abatement opportunities become less profitable over time? A global firm-level perspective using CDP data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).

    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:tcpoxx:v:15:y:2015:i:4:p:475-493. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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/tcpo20 .

    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.