72nd Economic Policy Panel

The October 2020 Economic Policy Panel Meeting, was due to take place in Berlin at the Federal Ministry of Finance, Germany, but instead was held online. One big theme for the conference was the economics of climate change – a forthcoming special issue guest edited by John Hassler and Per Krusell – but there were also new studies of the sustainability of public debt, house prices, gun laws and European banks’ provisioning against non-performing loans.
[view the full programme]

Fiscal standards for Europe
Olivier Blanchard, Alvaro Leandro, Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Exporting pollution
Itzhak Ben-David, Yeejin Jang, Stefanie Kleimeier, Michael Viehs

Rising UK house prices
David Miles, Victoria Monro

The policy panel on “Fiscal Standards for Europe” took place on Thursday 22 October, click below to watch the full event recording.

Policy Panel

Olivier Blanchard

Olivier Blanchard

Peterson Institute for International Economics

Author

Davide Debortoli

Davide Debortoli

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Discussant

Beatrice Weder di Mauro

Beatrice Weder di Mauro

CEPR, The Graduate Institute, Geneva, and INSEAD

Panelist

Michael McMahon

Michael McMahon

University of Oxford

Discussant

Jakob von Weizsäcker

Jakob von Weizsäcker

Federal Ministry of Finance, Germany

Panelist

Policy makers in the EU and elsewhere are concerned that unilateral pricing of the carbon externality induces carbon leakage through relocation of emission-intensive and trade-exposed production to other regions. A common measure to mitigate such leakage is to combine an emission trading system with output-based allocation (OBA) of allowances where the latter works as an implicit production subsidy to regulated industries. We show analytically that it is optimal to impose in addition a consumption tax on the OBA goods (i.e., goods that are entitled to OBA) at a rate which is equivalent in value to the OBA subsidy rate. The explanation is that the consumption tax alleviates excessive consumption of the OBA goods, which is a distortionary effect of introducing output-based allocation. Using a multi-region multi-sector computable general equilibrium model calibrated to empirical data, we quantify the welfare gains for the EU of imposing such a consumption tax on top of its existing emission trading system with OBA. We run Monte Carlo simulations to account for uncertain leakage exposure of goods entitled to OBA. The consumption tax increases welfare whether the goods are highly exposed to leakage or not, and hence can be regarded as smart hedging against carbon leakage.

The Market Stability Reserve (MSR), implemented in 2018 to complement the EU emission trading system (EU ETS), is designed such that the supply of allowances responds endogenously to demand. We show that an endogenous cap such as the MSR produces a Green Paradox. Abatement policies announced early but realized in the future are counter-effective because of the MSR: they increase cumulative emissions. We present the mechanisms in a two-period model, and then provide quantitative evidence of our result for an annual model disciplined on the price rise in the EU ETS that followed the introduction of the MSR. Our results point to the need for better coordination between different policies, such as the ‘European Green Deal’. We conclude with suggestions to improve the workings of an endogenous cap, ahead of the MSR review scheduled for 2021.

Other new studies on the agenda at the October 2020 Economic Policy Panel Meeting focus on:

sergio-souza

Authors

Economic Policy welcomes submissions of papers in all fields of economics but characterised by a significant policy content.

Submissions should be uploaded to our online editorial manager: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ecpol

For more information, read the Author Guidelines.

 
© Copyright 2021, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po. Website design and built by ZeroDotNine Ltd.