Carbon Taxes and CO2 Emissions: Sweden as a Case Study

By J. Andersson. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2019

456 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This quasi-experimental study is the first to find a significant causal effect of carbon taxes on emissions, empirically analyzing the implementation of a carbon tax and a value-added tax on transport fuel in Sweden. After implementation, carbon dioxide emissions from transport declined almost 11 percent, with the largest share due to the carbon tax alone, relative to a synthetic control unit constructed from a comparable group of OECD countries. Furthermore, the carbon tax elasticity of demand for gasoline is three times larger than the price elasticity. Policy evaluations of carbon taxes, using price elasticities to simulate emission reductions, may thus significantly underestimate their true effect. (JEL H23, L91, Q54, Q58)

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Economics and Econometrics, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b12a743b2d97c2a81de332b19bcc7ee7db3f66aa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Automotive Engineering

1. Germán Bersalli
2. Jessica F. Green
3. F. Pretis
4. Anthony G. Patt
5. J. Lilliestam

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Jessica F. Green
2. F. Pretis
3. Germán Bersalli
4. Anthony G. Patt
5. J. Lilliestam

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. Jessica F. Green
2. F. Pretis
3. Germán Bersalli
4. Anthony G. Patt
5. J. Lilliestam

Citations in the corpus

• The Macroeconomic Impact of Europe’s Carbon Taxes (2020, unknown): “A recent paper by Andersson (2019) focuses on the impact of Sweden’s carbon tax on transportation emissions.”
• Demand-side solutions to climate change mitigation consistent with high levels of well-being (2021, unknown): “For actual carbon tax reforms, however, carbon taxes make consumers reduce emissions more than could be expected from the relative price change alone 142,143 , consistent with a change in preferences.”
• Does a Carbon Tax Reduce CO2 Emissions? Evidence from British Columbia (2019, background): “Rivers and Schaufele (2015) as well as Lawley and Thivierge (2016) and Antweiler and Gulati (2016) show that the carbon tax lead to a reduction in gasoline demand.”
• Does carbon pricing reduce emissions? A review of ex-post analyses (2021, methodology): “In a recent study, using a ‘synthetic Sweden’ as a basis for evaluating the effect of the carbon tax, Andersson finds that the tax reduced emissions by 6.3% in an average year (Andersson 2019, p 3).”
• The effect of carbon pricing on technological change for full energy decarbonization: A review of empirical ex‐post evidence (2020, methodology): “The articles on British Columbia find strong emission reductions, but do not say why; in all cases, as in Andersson (2019) for Sweden, it appears to be caused by operational shifts (e.g., taking the bus, driving less) and possibly low-carbon investment (e.g., replacing a gasoline car with a diesel…”