Carbon border taxes could help the world move more efficiently toward sustainability. But if such taxes are to be part of a consensual multilateral approach, rather than a new source of conflict, policymakers will have to tackle distributional issues upfront as part of a strategic design, not as an afterthought.
WASHINGTON, DC – A time-honored but often problematic practice in basic welfare economics is to separate efficiency considerations from distributional concerns. In an economy with given endowments and a given distribution of them, the argument goes, there exists a set of prices that will guide competitive behavior toward an efficient allocation of resources. If the result is not desirable on equity grounds, then aseparate set of redistribution policies can be used to achieve a more desirable outcome.
WASHINGTON, DC – A time-honored but often problematic practice in basic welfare economics is to separate efficiency considerations from distributional concerns. In an economy with given endowments and a given distribution of them, the argument goes, there exists a set of prices that will guide competitive behavior toward an efficient allocation of resources. If the result is not desirable on equity grounds, then aseparate set of redistribution policies can be used to achieve a more desirable outcome.