Environmental Economics
The cromulent economics blog
recent posts
Category: Gas Tax
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Interesting results, but the policy recommendations seem like killing an ant with a sledgehammer. In the first study of its kind, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researcher Alan Meier, working with Yuche Chen of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, have estimated the fuel consumption penalty of this popular and fast-growing vehicle add-on. They found that…
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In a presentation titled "Alternatives for Making Federal Highway Spending More Productive," a Congressional Budget economist proposes three approaches to improving methods for spending on highway infrastructure: To make federal highway spending more productive for the economy, policymakers could adopt different approaches to managing highways and determining how to allocate funds, including: Charging drivers, Using…
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Maximilian Auffhammer at the energy blog with no name: … The national average price for gasoline is $1.80 this week, with a minimum of $1.29 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The external costs for a gallon of gasoline, as estimated in a now classic paper, are approximately $2 per gallon. This means that the average American is…
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Jeffrey Frankel at Econbrowser: World oil prices have been highly volatile during the last decade. Over the past year they have fallen more than 50%. Should we root for prices to go up, down, or stay the same? The economic effects of falling oil prices are negative overall for oil-exporting countries, of course, and positive…
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Oregon is about to embark on a first-in-the-nation program that aims to charge car owners not for the fuel they use, but for the miles they drive. The program is meant to help the state raise more revenue to pay for road and bridge projects at a time when money generated from gasoline taxes are…
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Paul J. Burke and Shuhei Nishitateno: This study utilizes data for 144 countries from 1991 to 2010 to present the first international estimates of the gasoline price elasticity of road fatalities. We instrument each country's gasoline price with that country's oil reserves and the yearly international crude oil price to address potential endogeneity concerns. Our findings…
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25% support higher electricity taxes and 36% support higher gas taxes "to try to reduce future global warming." Here are the questions and results from the poll: Someone should run the crosstabs on these questions and the one where "more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change."
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Margaret Walls: Federal and state gas taxes in their current form—excise taxes per gallon of fuel sold at the retail level—may have outlived their usefulness as a transportation funding source. There are two fundamental problems. First, they have not kept up with inflation. Second, as vehicle fuel efficiency has increased, tax revenues have declined; this…
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With apologies to the Talking Heads: Regarding the Dec. 2 front-page article “Effects are wide as oil prices sink”: One would have to be an unforgivable contrarian to second-guess the bonanza enjoyed by U.S. consumers from the dramatic drop in gasoline prices. Yet that development provides an opportunity whose cost would encroach only slightly on…
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I filled up for $2.77/gallon driving back from the airport last night. You can't get it for less than $3 in Boone: The national average price of gas tomorrow will drop below $3.00 per gallon for the first time since Dec. 22, 2010, ending its longest streak ever above that price, according to AAA. AAA…
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