Taxing energy to improve the environment: Efficiency and distributional effects

We study the effects of environmental tax policy in a dynamic overlapping generations model of a small open economy with environmental quality incorporated as a durable consumption good. Raising the energy tax may yield an efficiency gain if agents care enough about the environment. The benefits are unevenly distributed across generations since capital ownership, and the capital loss induced by a tax increase, rises with age. A suitable egalitarian bond policy can be employed in order to ensure everybody gains to the same extent. With this additional instrument the optimal energy tax can be computed