Distributional Effects of Transport Taxes： An Incidence Analysis

作     者：Fiorenza Carraro Andrea Zatti 

作者机构：Department of Political and Social Sciences University of Pavia Pavia 27100 Italy 

出 版 物：《Journal of Energy and Power Engineering》 (能源与动力工程（美国大卫英文）)

年 卷 期：2014年第8卷第8期

页      面：1415-1424页

学科分类：12[管理学] 02[经济学] 0201[经济学-理论经济学] 1201[管理学-管理科学与工程(可授管理学、工学学位)] 020105[经济学-世界经济] 

主　　题：Vehicle ownership taxes fuel excise duties distributional impacts 

摘      要：Wider use of economic instruments in the field of environmental and energy policy provides several benefits. These instruments not only create market-based incentives for environmentally friendly behaviors but also represent effective opportunities to collect revenues. In this context, energy and transport-related taxes play a major role, even if their extensive use has raised several concerns over equity issues. The main objective of the paper is to investigate the redistributive burden of existing transport taxes on Italian households. An incidence analysis is carried out on a sample of more than 23,000 Italian families for the year 2009. Some alternative policy options are also analyzed to provide some suggestions on how to countervail the potential negative regressive effects that might arise. We find that vehicle ownership taxes, if properly set, can represent a promising opportunity to blend together budget and equity needs. To obtain a better indication of the progressivity or regressivity of certain policy designs, we rely on some summary indexes, such as the Kakwani measure of progressivity and the Reynolds-Smolensky measure of redistributive capacity of a tax.