'In looking at the effects of ecological tax reform on allocation, this book addresses a very important issue. The results are interesting and have significant policy implications.' - Glenn Feltham, Canadian Tax Journal 'The book contains an excellent analysis of how environment taxation affects large countries that are highly integrated in world capital markets.' - Lans Bovenberg, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, The Netherlands The twin benefits of improving environmental quality and reducing tax distortions through the recycling of environmental tax proceeds prove an attractive policy objective. This book analyses the use of the double dividend concepts for evaluating ecological tax reforms. The author aims to analyse unilateral environmental policy measures thoroughly and to assess under which conditions a double dividend can be achieved. The analysis is undertaken in the context of international capital mobility and cross-border externalities. He also includes a discussion of an empirically relevant example for an ecological tax reform scenario in Germany - the DIW proposal.

A rigorous and innovative approach for integrating environmental policies and fiscal reform for the U.S. economy. Energy utilization, especially from fossil fuels, creates hidden costs in the form of pollution and environmental damages. The costs are well documented but are hidden in the sense that they occur outside the market, are not reflected in market prices, and are not taken into account by energy users. Double Dividend presents a novel method for designing environmental taxes that correct market prices so that they reflect the true cost of energy. The resulting revenue can be used in reducing the burden of the overall tax system and improving the performance of the economy, creating the double dividend of the title. The authors simulate the impact of environmental taxes on the U.S. economy using their Intertemporal General Equilibrium Model (IGEM). This highly innovative model incorporates expectations about future prices and policies. The model is estimated econometrically from an extensive 50-year dataset to incorporate the heterogeneity of producers and consumers. This approach generates confidence intervals for the outcomes of changes in economic policies, a new feature for models used in analyzing energy and environmental policies. These outcomes include the welfare impacts on individual households, distinguished by demographic characteristics, and for society as a whole, decomposed between efficiency and equity.

A comprehensive analysis of an environmental tax reform where people are taxed on pollution and the use of natural resources instead of on their income, this book looks at the challenges involved in implementing this tax reform across Europe.

A comprehensive dictionary of environmental economics, compiled by leading academics in the field. Each expression or phrase is explained clearly in non-technical language, with references given to its use in the growing literature on the subject area. From abatement to zonal travel cost method (ZTCM), there are over 1000 cross-referenced entries covering topics such as: environmental instruments for policy-making, techniques applied in environmental and natural resource economics, major issues in environmental economics and environmental management, economics of sustainable development, natural resource accounting, and international environmental agreements. As well as providing incisive answers to questions such as 'What is natural capital?' or 'when are crowding diseconomies important?', the dictionary includes a list of commonly used acronyms and abbreviations, and a complete bibliography detailing the major texts in the field is provided.

'Helm's book is impressive for its combination of rigorous theory in real world contexts . . . highly recommended.' - David Pearce, Environmental and Resource Economics To deal effectively with transboundary environmental problems such as climate change, it is important to have an idea of the model for an 'efficient' and 'fair' policy. An understanding of the strategic interactions involved in the international decision-making process is also essential. Carsten Helm uses rigorous theoretical reasoning and applications to address these issues.

This book was initiated while the three major authors were at the Development Centre of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, working on its program on economic growth, trade, and sustainability. We wish to thank the OECD Development Centre for its support. The book was completed during summer 2001 at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University. We appreciate the resources and financial support CARD provided for publication of this work. Sandra Clarke provided technical editing of the manuscripts and oversaw the indexing of the book; Becky Olson prepared the camera-ready copy of the final manuscript. We thank them for their instrumental help in these last steps. Part of the work presented in this volume previously appeared in some form in journals. The analysis of Chile presented in Chapter 6 appeared as “Growth, Trade, Pollution and Natural-Resource Use in Chile. Evidence from an Economywide Model,” Agricultural Economics 19(1998): 87-97; and as “Trade Integration, Environmental Degradation, and Public Health in Chile: Assessing the Linkages,” Environment and Development Economics, in press. The work on Costa Rica and Indonesia summarised in Chapter 10 appeared as “Is There a Trade-off Between Trade Liberalisation and Pollution Abatement in Costa Rica? A Computable General Equilibrium Assessment,” Journal of Policy Modeling 20(1): 11-31; and as “The Environment and Welfare Implications of Trade and Tax Policy,” Journal of Development Economics 52(1997): 65-82.