Can Pigou at the Polls Stop Us Melting the Poles? /
Anderson, Soren T.
Can Pigou at the Polls Stop Us Melting the Poles? / Soren T. Anderson, Ioana Marinescu, Boris Shor. - Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019. - 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white); - NBER working paper series no. w26146 . - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26146. .
August 2019.
Surveys show majority U.S. support for a carbon tax. Yet none has been adopted. Why? We study two failed carbon tax initiatives in Washington State in 2016 and 2018. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we show that Washington's real-world campaigns reduced support by 20 percentage points. Resistance to higher energy prices explains opposition to these policies in the average precinct, while ideology explains 90% of the variation in votes across precincts. Conservatives preferred the 2016 revenue-neutral policy, while liberals preferred the 2018 green-spending policy. Yet we forecast both initiatives would fail in other states, demonstrating that surveys are overly optimistic.
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Can Pigou at the Polls Stop Us Melting the Poles? / Soren T. Anderson, Ioana Marinescu, Boris Shor. - Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019. - 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white); - NBER working paper series no. w26146 . - Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26146. .
August 2019.
Surveys show majority U.S. support for a carbon tax. Yet none has been adopted. Why? We study two failed carbon tax initiatives in Washington State in 2016 and 2018. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we show that Washington's real-world campaigns reduced support by 20 percentage points. Resistance to higher energy prices explains opposition to these policies in the average precinct, while ideology explains 90% of the variation in votes across precincts. Conservatives preferred the 2016 revenue-neutral policy, while liberals preferred the 2018 green-spending policy. Yet we forecast both initiatives would fail in other states, demonstrating that surveys are overly optimistic.
System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.