On the role of green taxes in social accounting : a numerical analysis

This paper addresses social accounting numerically in a dynamic general equilibrium model. The main purposes are to study: (i) whether emission taxes based on static willingness to pay information can be used to improve the welfare level, and; (ii) whether these taxes provide close enough approximations of the correct Pigou-vian emission tax to be useful in the context of social accounting. The results indicate that, if environmental quality is relatively linear with respect to pollution, the approximation of the Pigouvian emission tax will bring the economy close to the socially optimal solution and, at the same time, provide a close approximation of the value of net investments in environmental capital.digitalisering@um