The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: evidence from microdata Articles uri icon

authors

  • MARTIN, RALF
  • DE PREUX, LAURE B.
  • WAGNER, ULRICH J

publication date

  • September 2014

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 14

volume

  • 117

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0047-2727

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1879-2316

abstract

  • We estimate the impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the full tax and plants that paid only 20% of the tax. Exploiting exogenous variation in eligibility for the tax discount, we find that the carbon tax had a strong negative impact on energy intensity and electricity use. No statistically significant impacts are found for employment, revenue or plant exit (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

keywords

  • carbon tax; climate change levy; energy use; manufacturing; policy evaluation; uk; climate-change agreements; environmental-regulation; pollution-control; regulations; emissions; industries; markets; program; census