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Xuhong Su, Environmental Taxation and Green Fiscal Reforms: Theory and Impact, edited by Larry Kreiser, Soocheol Lee, Kazuhiro Ueta, Janet E. Milne and Hope Ashiabor, Science and Public Policy, Volume 43, Issue 5, October 2016, Pages 727–728, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scw005
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Extract
Environmental protection calls for innovative theories and complimentary instruments to deliver better prospects. A large body of the literature often builds on Pigouvian theory, counting on taxes to align individual behaviors and correct social externalities, but this is often challenged by problems with measuring and implementation. Alternatively, using taxes as regulatory instruments faces the problem of bureaucratic regulation and proves to be far from perfect. What would be good practices, roles and functions of environmental taxation remains to be explored, an area into which Environmental Taxation and Green Fiscal Reforms: Theory and Impact, provides many insights. Intending to be both global and practical, this book offers new theories and numerous cases on how taxation instruments can be (re)invented to cope with various challenges arising from different countries.
The first half of the book maps theoretical landscapes of environmental taxation and reforms. It starts with an eco-fee theory (Chapter 1), contending that environmental fees are complementary to taxation and facilitate a stronger linkage between environmental uses and benefits to payers, and that the eco-fee also brings stronger governmental protection of resources. Chapter 2 highlights the importance of environmental capital and its depreciation, proposing an environment–macroeconomic model and predicting substantial macroeconomic benefit if environmental taxes are to be further invested into environmental and societal causes. Chapter 3 elaborates the precautionary principle in preserving natural resources, calling for positive measures to ensure sustainability, even when scientific certainty has not yet been achieved. Particular legal and moral obligations are further extrapolated using the case of the Austrian government’s decisions in energy fields.