IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/slucer/2013_003.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Signaling Effect of Environmental and Health-Based Taxation and Legislation for Public Policy: An Empirical Analysis

Author

Listed:

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to examine how taxes affect consumption of commodities that are detrimental to health and the environment: tobacco, alcoholic beverages, household energy and petroleum fuel (petrol) for transportation. Specifically, we examine if a tax increase leads to a significantly larger change in consumption than a producer price change, which is referred to as the signaling effect from taxation. This objective is achieved through an empirical analysis using the Linear Almost Ideal Demand System. The analysis uses aggregated cross sectional time series data and information on major legislation introductions in Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom from 1970 to 2009. We find the main result to be that the signaling effect is significant for “Alcoholic Beverages” and “Electricity” in Sweden, “Electricity” in Denmark and “Electricity and Gas” and “Electricity” the United Kingdom. This implies that tax policy is more effective in tackling consumption of commodities which produce negative public effects (negative externalities affecting the social good such as pollution) than those for negative private effects (negative externalities affecting the private good such as health).

Suggested Citation

  • Brockwell, Erik, 2013. "The Signaling Effect of Environmental and Health-Based Taxation and Legislation for Public Policy: An Empirical Analysis," CERE Working Papers 2013:3, CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:slucer:2013_003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cere.se/documents/wp/2013/CERE_WP2013-3update.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Broberg, Thomas, 2014. "Relative income and the WTP for public goods - A case study of forest conservation in Sweden," CERE Working Papers 2014:6, CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics.
    2. Nkosi, Mfundo & Dikgang, Johane & Kutela Gelo, Dambala & Pholo, Alain, 2021. "Greening the vehicle fleet, how does South Africa’s tax reforms affect new car sales," EconStor Preprints 236726, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    3. Brännlund, Runar, 2013. "The effects on energy saving from taxes on motor fuels: The Swedish case," CERE Working Papers 2013:6, CERE - the Center for Environmental and Resource Economics.
    4. Alvarado, Miriam & Penney, Tarra L. & Unwin, Nigel & Murphy, Madhuvanti M. & Adams, Jean, 2021. "Evidence of a health risk ‘signalling effect’ following the introduction of a sugar-sweetened beverage tax," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    5. Davide Cerruti & Anna Alberini & Joshua Linn, 2017. "Charging Drivers by the Pound: The Effects of the UK Vehicle Tax System," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 17/271, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    6. Silvia Tiezzi & Stefano F. Verde, 2019. "The signaling effect of gasoline taxes and its distributional implications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(2), pages 145-169, June.
    7. Silvia Tiezzi & Stefano F. Verde, 2017. "The signaling effect of gasoline taxes and its distributional implications," RSCAS Working Papers 2017/06, European University Institute.
    8. Silvia Tiezzi & Stefano F. Verde, 2019. "The signaling effect of gasoline taxes and its distributional implications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 17(2), pages 145-169, June.
    9. Davide Cerruti & Anna Alberini & Joshua Linn, 2019. "Charging Drivers by the Pound: How Does the UK Vehicle Tax System Affect CO2 Emissions?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(1), pages 99-129, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    environmental taxation; health-based taxation; public policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hhs:slucer:2013_003. 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: Mona Bonta Bergman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.cere.se .

    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.