Environmental policy in the presence of an informal sector
Environmental policy in the presence of an informal sector
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jeem.2018.03.011
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发表时间：
2018-07-01
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Liu, Antung A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bento, Antonio M.;Jacobsen, Mark R.;Liu, Antung A.
我们展示了非正规部门的存在如何通过两种机制大幅降低环境和能源税收政策的成本。首先，能源税间接向非正规部门征税，因为即使是非正规公司也必须购买正规部门的能源，如电力。其次，税基向能源的收入中性转移可以减少由非正式部门替代的商品的税收负担。这些机制可以导致从非正规劳动力到正规部门的福利增加替代。我们在美国税收制度的程式化模型中考虑这些影响的大小。尽管美国的非正规部门相对较小，但我们发现，能源税的扭曲成本减少了一半以上。在非正规部门通常规模大得多的发展中国家，我们在这里确定的影响变得更加相关：我们发现在许多情况下总成本为负。最后，我们讨论了两个潜在的重要抵消效应：发展中国家使用非正式燃料和非正式生产替代能源密集型产品的潜力。我们展示了这些不同类型的非正式行为是如何竞争的，并发现福利增强效应通常占主导地位。(C) 2018爱思唯尔公司版权所有。
We demonstrate how the presence of an informal sector can sharply lower the cost of environmental and energy tax policy through two mechanisms. First, energy taxes indirectly tax the informal sector because even informal firms must buy formal sector sources of energy such as electricity. Second, a revenue-neutral shift in the tax base toward energy can decrease the tax burden on goods which are substituted for by the informal sector. These mechanisms can lead to welfare-enhancing substitution from informal labor into the formal sector. We consider the magnitude of these effects in a stylized model of the U.S. tax system. Even though the U.S. informal sector is relatively small, we find that distortionary costs of energy taxes are reduced by more than half. In developing countries, where the informal sector is typically much larger, the effect we identify here become even more relevant: we find negative gross costs in many cases. Finally, we address two potentially important countervailing effects: the use of informal fuels in developing countries and the potential for informal production to substitute for energy-intensive goods. We show how these different types of informality compete, and find that welfare enhancing effects typically dominate. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.