Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/192320 
Year of Publication: 
2002
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Papers No. 338
Publisher: 
Statistics Norway, Research Department, Oslo
Abstract: 
In conducting economic policy, governments generally face conflicts in various objectives, e.g. between efficiency and equity. In Norway, one objective of energy politics has been to reduce electricity consumption, and several tax increases have been proposed. Whether this objective may be in conflict with objectives of efficiency and equity is the focus in this paper. We discuss the effects on household behaviour of three different electricity tax schemes, one proportional and two non-linear. For each household we estimate the reduction in household electricity consumption. As measures of distributional effects and efficiency effects we estimate compensating variation and excess tax burden from the tax schemes. We find that the non-linear tax scheme targeting high electricity consumption is most preferred in order to reduce consumption and least preferred concerning the objective of minimizing excess tax burden. When considering distributional effects, the ranking of tax schemes depends on the weight placed on different household groups.
Subjects: 
Household energy consumption
electricity taxation
distributional effects
excess tax burden
compensated variation
tax burden
linear expenditure system.
JEL: 
D12
H22
D39
C31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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