Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Open Access Master's Report
Degree Name
Master of Science in Environmental and Energy Policy (MS)
Administrative Home Department
Department of Social Sciences
Advisor 1
Adam Wellstead
Committee Member 1
Shan Zhou
Committee Member 2
Audrey Mayer
Abstract
Conceptualized as early as 1920 by English economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, but not formalized until later work in the 1970s and 1990s, “environmental charges” are a form of Pigouvian taxes that suggest the revenue burden of governance could be shifted from economic “goods” to environmental “bads”. While their association with Pigouvian taxes would suggest that environmental charges are applied as a policy instrument to encourage the reduction or elimination of environmental externalities, their application at the federal level in the United States suggests this is not the case. This report postulates that federally applied environmental charges accept environmental externalities as the status quo and are instead intended to recover the government’s cost in addressing the environmental externality.
Recommended Citation
Zupko, Robert, "Externalities as the Status Quo: Federal Application of Environmental Charges in the United States", Open Access Master's Report, Michigan Technological University, 2020.