The Economic Consequences of Effective Carbon Taxes

Abstract

This paper studies the economic consequences of carbon taxes at the macroeconomic and sectoral level. I propose a novel monthly measure of effective carbon tax rates, which, in contrast to the measures used by the existing literature, accounts for the time-varying emission coverage of taxes that are both explicitly and implicitly levied on greenhouse gas-emitting goods. Employing the new measure for four Nordic countries, I find that effective carbon taxes reduce emissions as expected but also decrease macroeconomic and sectoral activity - though there is some heterogeneity in the effects within and across the Nordic countries.